Hello all,
This is my first effort at a city map in Photoshop, and only my second Photoshop project. This area is a zoomed in section of the Hot Gate map I am working on.
The idea of the map was a flotilla/dock town that was built around giant ships that are now permanently docked and are used as major hubs in the town. I struggled with the dock design around the ships, trying to figure out how the docks might grow around them as they were retired for service.
I don't like the castle looking building on the land, that is going bye bye.
Hopefully the map is interesting, any advice or feedback is always welcome.
Started off with the land (still figuring out my line work).
Started messing with docks, ships, and added in some border elements from The Hot Gate map to help me hold it all together.
So I started adding in buildings and some district details, working on shade/shadow with the buildings around the largest ship.
- took out the paper banner at the bottom
- added in the pirate icon in the upper left (all of the corner icons represent different pirate factions that operate in the area)
- The giant gear/cog is a water pool for a dwarven submarine to come up in (dwarves like caves, subs are like caves, lets roll with it)
update 03/17/15 - this one is a jpeg *Thanks Azelor for the tip* lets see how it goes =)
So I went in and modified a bunch of the docking in the North East section of the map as well as a bunch of small dock tweaks throughout, mainly putting in boat access to some of the buildings.
- Modified Docking (really tried to take the advice about putting buildings over the edge to heart and see if I could make it work with what I had goin on, I hope it looks ok).
- Started some light/shadow work on the roof pitches
- started doing some drop shadow work, still plenty of that left
- I did go through and I started labeling the waterways, docks, piers, etc... that's hiding on a separate layer....I could post that if anyone thought it might be interesting to look at.
- tweaked some of the primary dock color patterns, I was trying to make the edge of the docks look salted, the rest of the wood is old and a grey/brown.
Update 03/19/15
Thanks all!
~Sharpie