It's looking pretty good. We're going to have to get a team together to harass you into putting out a pack of those wonderful icons!
One thing that's got me scratching my head though, is why westwall is on the eastern side of the city. Of course, I just woke up and it will be an hour or so before my brain kicks in.
-IG
Heh. Thanks on the icons. They're actually pretty easy...maybe I can do a tutorial. Just used some "concept art" techniques on them and they did turn out pretty cool. Well, mainly the city one turned out cool. The other two are so-so.
Ah. The wall. Well, truthfully, because the city is on the west side of the right place to *build* a wallBut I put some thought into it and decided that maybe it was a two-tier defense. The forward position gives you a better view of the steppes and earlier warning. The river is a good place to bog down invaders and reduce their numbers - and give warning to the folks on the wall in case you fail to turn them back.
Secondly, the town could serve as sort of the last safe place for caravans setting out across the steppes to rest up and resupply before leaving into no-man's-land. Same goes for those coming in - it'd take longer to get up the elevation to the gate in the wall, especially if you've got the horde on your tail.
It's positioning was one of the reasons I added Bastion. I figure there are others along the river but Bastion is the big one. They're really just outposts writ large...and Argria eventually grew into a city/town. I was thinking maybe it had a more "forty" name long ago.
M
[edit]Oh, and, also: without the outposts you might have nomads sniffing right up to your doorstep. They helped the kingdom take and hold the land west of the mountains and provided a handy buffer zone, even though no one really wanted to live there. Maybe there'd now be quite a few relatively new towns between them and the mountains.
I'm mainly making this stuff up as I go along, trying to find the story in the map you made. So, please, do ask questions if something doesn't seem right...it'll prompt me to come up with a plausible explanation or make changes so things make sense.
[/edit]
Last edited by mearrin69; 12-02-2009 at 09:41 AM.
Started sketching tonight, using Autodesk Sketchbook Express (came with my new Intuos4) to try it out. Turned into more than a sketch, though, and I probably will just now move to doing something more finished in PS...I don't think this is really "finished quality" but there's no point my drawing a bunch of buildings to just have to redraw them later. This should give the general layout and feel, I guess.
Basically, you've got the watchtower on a small hill surrounded by fortifications with military structures inside of the wall. Around it, close by for safety, you've got the older structures of the town...the inevitable hangers-on that follow any military force and eventually set up permanent shop and form the basis of the town that some day surrounds the base. Beyond that, things get a bit more structured and maybe slightly more up-scale. Temples, community spaces, market squares, etc. To the west is the nomad quarter, featuring living space (both mobile and permanent), trading areas of the bazaar (ranging from an upturned shield over a fire where "meat" is cooked to horse auctions), and hiring-on markets (where an outgoing caravan can arrange for native escort and spread bribes for "passage banners" that will supposedly allay attacks while crossing the steppes).
I've probably made this into a bigger project than I should have but...hey...that's me.
M
Nothing wrong with big projects, and this one looks good so far.
-IG
Doing it a little rough, saving time and then mapping it again later at a bigger scale for just a few of the interesting buildings might be a better approach than trying to make a lot of small scale buildings look great all at once taking a lot of time on one map. I think its looking great so far.Originally Posted by mearrin69
Finally got time to make a start on a full-scale version. Nothing much to see but figured I'd post to say that I am, in fact, still working on it.
M
Great! Glad to see you're still working on it.
-IG
Between graduations, family visits, work, and the holidays I haven't had much time to do anything fun lately. BUT, I have rekindled this one since I had some free time last night and hopefully over the next couple of days.
I wasn't much liking my Photoshop start so I decided to try out Illustrator. Just bought CS4 and it was sitting there not doing much of nothing so I figured "why not". Right now I'm just trying out some building shapes. Not sure whether I'd rather try to fully draw buildings in Illustrator or to just make shapes and then bring them into Photoshop and use them as a mask for painting. I see some people getting good results in Illustrator but I'm a novice with the tool so I'll probably go the latter route.
Okay, back to it.
M
nvr mind
great start.
I'm not sure about the true sizes of medieval towns, villages, or hamlets. I'd guess this one would qualify as a city even by today's standards. Fantasy settings tend to overpopulate, though, so I suppose that's okay.
As I mess with this I wonder if my scale between the fortress and the city buildings is maybe going to look off. I did intend for many of the buildings inside the walls (and the tower itself) to be quite large...but the buildings in town look miniscule by comparison. I think some of the scale issues will resolve themselves when I get trees and such in there.
Threw on a rough scale and a kludged compass rose.
M
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