August 2009 Entry: Oten'jo (ag7)

[Koor]

Or, you could draw 25 individual buildings, scan them, then use 20 duplicates and scatter them about throughout your city. With that many original buildings, the copies wouldn't look so obvious. And you can slightly resize the buildings so you have larger and smaller versions and not obviously copies of others. Then make the specific unique structures: castle, 3 temples, 1 shrine/park, docks, walled sections.

Though still some work, its not like drawing 600+ buildings from scratch.

Just how I'd do it.

GP

That's what I was thinking, along with the more selfish thought that he might then add those building patterns as a product that the community could use quick asian style maps.

[Gamerprinter]

On Koors note, I've commissioned Devin Knight to create a couple dozen map objects of individual samurai, monks, farmers, merchants, Kaidanese women for use in Kaidan RPG for VTT (Virtual Table Top) usage.

DK, told me he's going to do a tutorial on how to create these kinds of models and post it in the tutorial section - coming up pretty soon, I hear.

GP

[armoredgear7]

I've finished designing a few buildings for the map.

The plan right now is to do all the texturing & lighting in Photoshop, so the Illustrator artwork is mostly lines with limited color. The colors still need adjustment, something I'll edit when I move into Photoshop.

I've been doing a lot of experiments with pattern brushes & the appearance palette (to get multiple strokes on the same path) in Illustrator, to see about streamlining the workflow of making so many buildings. You can see the results of my efforts on the wall building (left). The low wall around the house is also a stroke style. Right now it looks like the buildings themselves will have to be drawn manually, although I have a brush to make variable-length buildings (so that the roof texture carries along) too.