September Entry: "Feeding Hills" Village Maps

[Steel General]

Looks good to me.

[Ashenvale]

Here are my very first baby steps building the "evil" side of town.

Making the evil side work as a night image is going to be a grave challenge. I asked the author if there were any haunting light sources I could add. He said no, not really . . . but I may add them just the same.

Next step . . . let's destroy some buildings!

As I mentioned above, I'd originally thought this double map showed one town at two different points in time, the first a when it was a thriving farming community, the second after it had been abandoned, become overrun by nature, and taken over by evil doers. Then I read the manuscript and discovered the two towns exist at the same time. The evil doers built a duplicate of the town for nefarious reasons, and the duplicate is falling into ruin and being overtaken by the wilderness. (The adventurers go underground, bad things happen, and they come up in what looks like the real town years in the future. They don't know they're only a short distance away from where they're supposed to be.) So some major topographical elements, like the lake and duck pond, don't exist in the second image.

[Ashenvale]

Trashing houses is fun! (Need's shadows.)

[Coyotemax]

That looks to be almost as cathartic as using a real sledgehammer, can't wait to see the whole thing

[armoredgear7]

The peaceful map is really beautiful; I think you've done an excellent job pulling off the colour palette and perspective. I have to remember to rep you once I spread it around some.

You mentioned before about the difference viewing it between screens; if this map is going to be printed I'd keep the saturation a little higher than looks comfortable - it's probably good the way it looks now. Low saturation pastel colours print inconsistently in CMYK.

[Ashenvale]

Question: Should I zoom in on the night scene in the bottom half like I've done here? I'm inclined to do so because I can show more details. But it won't balance in scale with the upper half anymore.

Thoughts?

Still lots to do, buildings to destroy, three buildings to add, roads to erode, and trees, scrub, and vines to plant and drape over things.

Not enough hours!

[Ashenvale]

Please offer opinions on the question in my last post!

But moving on, check out the easy way I discovered to create deep grasses. (Youl'll have to click on the image to see the results; the thumbnail below is too small to reveal the effect.)

I built the buildings and stone walls on one layer, and the green background on a second layer behind it. I painted the green background layer in a variety of values of green to suggest changes in topography. Then I made grass-like patterns in one step with Image/Filter/Texture/Texturizer/Brush Strokes/Sprayed Strokes.

(Okay, that's a lie. I tried it that way, but it gave me grass-like strokes either vertically, horizontally, or at a 45 degree angle. I wanted something less than a 45 degree angle, so I copied the green ground layer to another file, rotated it 35 degrees, applied the vertical filter, rotated it back 35 degrees, and then dropped it back into the original file with strokes going diagonally from the bottom left to the top right at a 35 degree angle.)

That put the buildings and stone walls layer on top of the grassy layer. I then used my Eraser Tool, set to a tiny Brush size (100% Opacity, 100% Flow, 100% Hardness) to erase grassy lines into the bottom edges of each building and stone wall. This revealed the grassy layer underneath, suggesting the grass is in FRONT of the buildings and walls, not behind it.

The buildings and stone walls still need shadows, which will probably require me to adjust the process somewhat. But I'm pleased with the initial results. Sank those buildings right down into the overgrown grasses!

[Gidde]

The grass looks great. I'd be inclined to keep the scale balance, but I also space christmas bulbs perfectly evenly on the tree ...

You have an amazing vision. Follow your gut

[Steel General]

I would have to say keep the scales between the maps the same. Otherwise I think you lose some of the 'before/after' effect.

[Ashenvale]

I'm having too much fun obliterating these buildings! Working out some kind of issues here.

I'm increasingly inclined to zoom in on the darker, "after" portion of the map. I realize it diminishes the clean comparison between before and after. But the author of the adventure focuses on a geographic area in the "Old Feeding Hills" (nighttime) section of the map that's much smaller than the daytime "Feeding Hills" map. If I include the full scope of the upper map in the lower map, the bulk of it, per the author, will simply be endless exapnses of trees. So I think I'll zoom in on the goodies. Like these here!

(Do click on the map. The posted thumbnail misses all the fun details. And there's lots to do yet!)

(This image, like each of the others on this thread, is copyright 2009 by Edward J. Reed, all rights reserved.)