Sagitarii - practice city map

[Caenwyr]

About the legend, I wonder if it might not look better to display that info in a separate section, such as for instance placing the title, scale and legend all in a frame below the image itself. Just a thought.

You're right of course. In fact I plan to add a pretty substantial border to the map, which will include the legend (notable places, gates and temples), a title, and maybe - just maybe - a few perspective drawings of the most important buildings. Those ugly colour thingies you see on the map now are just temporary.

Luckily!

[Caenwyr]

Alright. A smallish update this time. I've taken on a handful of commissions lately, so progress on the Sagitarii map will be slow for a while, but I did find some time late last night to do some additional linework and start the colouring process.



Changes since the last update:

• added the monastery
• added the water palace (just the buildings for now, the greenery will follow later)
• added a splash of colour!
• and corrected a ton of almost invisible mistakes

Still to be done:

• in the linework section:
  
  • shipyard
  • some ships, sloops and dinghies
  • forests
  • farmland
  • swampy bit
  • elaborate the forum outside the Baths
  
  
• in the colouring part:
  
  • some finishing touches to the rooftops etc
  • the entire land mask (idea is to have it look kinda dry and parched, but only Cthulhu knows if I'll succeed in conveying that message)
  • some (hopefully) delicious shadowing! Both on the buildings themselves as their drop shadow, and some nice and tidy terrain shadowing as well. Might be I do a quick pass through Sketchup to get that terrain shadow in the right place. If time permits. Which it probably won't
  
  
• in the extras
  
  • a scale, a legend and a title
  • a slab of text (just for the heck of it. No idea what that text will say, might even go for the ol' "Lorem Ipsum" bit)
  • and maybe, if I'm terribly motivated, some perspective sketches of the most notable buildings

Don't you just love an almost endless list like that?

[Josiah VE]

Just... awesome!!! The colour really brings it to life.
Out of curiosity what sort of blend modes do you use for colour and shading?

[Caenwyr]

Just... awesome!!! The colour really brings it to life.
Out of curiosity what sort of blend modes do you use for colour and shading?

What you see here is just "multiply" all over the place (well, at least for the colour layers). The shadow layers will be in "multiply" as well, whereas the light layers will be in "add". I've noticed Photoshop and GIMP give very different results for similar blending modes though, so depending on the package you use, you might have to play around a bit

[Josiah VE]

What you see here is just "multiply" all over the place (well, at least for the colour layers). The shadow layers will be in "multiply" as well, whereas the light layers will be in "add". I've noticed Photoshop and GIMP give very different results for similar blending modes though, so depending on the package you use, you might have to play around a bit

Interesting, I've only used overlay layers for shadow and lighting..

[ChickPea]

The colouring looks great so far. It's really vivid and eye-catching.

Also, I approve of lists! I find I get so much more done in my mapping if I open up Gimp with a list of particular goals that I hope to achieve. Otherwise I often end up just messing around and wasting time (once in a while I'll accidentally create something awesome, but mostly it's a total timesink)

[ThomasR]

I especially love the copper-green roofs ! The rest is awesome as usual but the roofs are an idea that gets me

[Caenwyr]

Thanks for all the comments guys, your positive attitude really keeps me going!

Below you'll find another update. I hope you'll like it!



So I guess I finished the linework for this one! Am particularly proud of the forum (did a LOT of research, with just a handful of brush strokes as a result) and the ships! Although I may have gone a little overboard (pun intended) with the number of fishing dinghies. I don't know - what do you think?

Also did the colouring for the new linework additions (forests too), the roads, and a little sandy gradient on the coastal waters to give the impression you can still see the bottom there.

Still to do: terrain texture, and shading. This will be a hellish job I'm sure . And then the frame of course!

[Josiah VE]

Like it? I LOVE it!

Those colour are really bringing it to life, and I love all those boats! I like how many there are but I'm wondering what the proportion to the population of the town is.. Oh well.
Fishing dinghies, love it!

I'm guessing you made a brush for each of the boats, then go crazy with it?

I'm totally inspired by this and working on a town that's actually fairly similar to this for the guild world.

[Caenwyr]

I'm guessing you made a brush for each of the boats, then go crazy with it?

I did, for the fishing boats at least. I tried doing that for the galleys as well, but those turned out far too blurry, especially when rotated. So I turned the original one into a smart object and copied and rotated that instead. Worked like a charm.

I think I'm gonna keep these ships for future reference, they're pretty nice (and took hours of research and work - too much for them just to be used here!)

I'm totally inspired by this and working on a town that's actually fairly similar to this for the guild world.

What? You thief! Theft! Fire! Bloody murder!!
Nah, I'm kidding. Go ahead and do something crazy with it! Could you give me the link though? I can't seem to find the thread!

Just a minor heads up: since this practice map is turning out better than I thought (and since cities can basically be plunked down wherever you want on a regional map), I might recycle this one for my novel. I'm thinking Faltorn (on the southern peninsula of my novel map), although I suppose it will have to be rotated and mirrored to fit in nicely. Weird!