C map, fertile valley

[landorl]

I love the style, it is quite unique and well executed.

I think that the big problem is scale. I don't know how hard it would be, but I would suggest doubling the size of the map, but keep all of the features the same size. Thus there will be a bigger gap between everything.

[jfrazierjr]

What a great piece of art! I am fine with the scale differences IF you reduce the spacing so that it does not appear that that whole series of islands is one large city. ie, less buildings grouped together and spread out the groupings.

One thing, now that I look at it closer, I hope the southern mountains are not yet complete at this time. Those northerly mountains are just spot on and EXCELLENT!

[Ascension]

I'm with Lando on this one...the overall image is rather small. Simply increasing the size of the land area while keeping the scale of the buildings the same would do much to help convey the sense your looking for without having to shrink the buildings. Thus you keep the detail that you want but it means more work on painting the rest of the stuff...trade-offs.

[hunab.cu]

Great style. Too much "cheerful" for me to adapt to my works, 'cause I tend to create only dark and evil lands... But, why not? Maybe someday I'll try to learn how to make a colorful, shiny map ...
Definitely good one, Blake. Looking forward to more works by you.

[Blake]

Thanks all for your comments. I'll address a few things in particular:

I'm a little curious as to why the desert remains dry with all of that snow and ice right to the north of it.

Good point. I'll thin it out a bit better into a drier tundra. It's supposed to be glacial, but I'll make sure the elevation differences are more apparent, and move the ice back so far as I can. From North to south, this does represent a rather great distance and different in elevation.

I do think that the valley looks very small. This is probably an artefact of the fact that the mountains are really big rather than the size of the town buildings... If you shrink the mountains it will become very obvious that the town images are symbolic rather than to scale.

Thank you! Yes, you're entirely right. I'll rough up the mountains a bit with more mountainousness so they resemble more of a chain than single mountains.

I am fine with the scale differences IF you reduce the spacing so that it does not appear that that whole series of islands is one large city. ie, less buildings grouped together and spread out the groupings.

I was thinking something along the same lines, and now that you've mentioned it, you're definitely right; I need to show the space between these towns better so it doesn't look like one huge sprawling city (it is somewhat, but not to that extent).

Too much "cheerful" for me to adapt to my works, 'cause I tend to create only dark and evil lands...

Mine is too, but I find the thematic clash of storybook colours and extremely dark and evil story to create a pleasant visual irony or sorts.

That said, I probably will darken it up a bit more by desaturating and playing with some of the colours- it is a bit too bright right now. I just haven't done much with the colour yet.



There's more than a fair chance that I'll mostly scrap this and re-draw it on paper. "Never throw good art after bad" my mammy [never actually] said... it would probably take more time to correct the problems than to redraw it on paper and then copy over some of the good parts (there's some detail work here and there I can salvage).

I have to go to Hong Kong this weekend.... maybe I can find some time to sketch in the airport (I get in at something like midnight) while I'm waiting for the city to wake up.

[Karro]

I gotta say, I think this thing is very easy on the eyes.

I like the colors and the style. I think the exagerated buildings are great, and I'm with those who think that the scale is not so important on a map like this. It's clear from context that the buildings are out-of-scale, and it's meant more for illustrative purposes than for actual accurate detail.

The artistic details in this thing are brilliant: the damn holding back the icey lake, the eclectic mix of asian and european architectural styles, the mountains and the forests. If the whole map were finished in the same way as the central fertile value were (perhaps with some softening and blurring of details out at the edges to keep the valley in primary focus), this would be spectacular.

I don't know that transferring this to a hand-drawn will achieve the same results. I think you've already got a lot of good going on in this map. Although, if you're as good with hand-drawn color media and techniques as you are with this, then maybe that's not a problem...


[edit: I was going to rep this, but it looks like I already got you recently.]