Harpy Island and Fort

[ajrittler]

This will be my second map. It’s a detailed view of Harpy Island that’s shown in my first map – Scuttle Island for the upcoming arc in my current D&D campaign.

WIP and Finished Map Threads of Scuttle Island found here:
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=34758
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=35237

From the start, I’ve always envisioned Harpy Island just like Fort Denison in Australia. A small island with a defensive fort at the entrance of Scuttle Bay. The only significant difference is the tower on Harpy will also act as a chain tower for the bay. (I’m not happy with the fort’s name so that’ll change when I come up with something better.)

Because of this, I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel ‘design wise’ and since I’m pressed for time, I used the following image from the “Fort Denison Sea Level Rise. Vulnerability Study” document provided by the Australian government as my basis.

Image 1: Fort Denison Sea Level Rise. Vulnerability Study



My first map was vibrant and colorful. For this map, I wanted to do something different, a bit more traditional.

I really love the look and feel of these two maps so I’m setting out to emulate them. I hope that I end up kind of close, but no worries if I don’t because this is all about practice!

Image 2: James Island


Image 3: Fort Pitt


As a lessons learned from my first map I started all the initial shapes in Illustrator vs. Photoshop. One, for me it’s just easier since I’m more familiar with Illustrator. Second, and more importantly if I need to scale the shapes in the future I can. Each piece is built as its own individual layer for future reusability.

First thing I did was draw my initial island. Fairly straightforward and simple.

Here it is:


Next, I drew the fort. …and then I re-drew the fort again. …and then I re-drew the fort again. I’ve spent hours on something so simple! It’s not perfect, but it will do for now.

Here it is:


Once the initial shapes were complete, I brought them into Photoshop.
First, I imported the island. Gave it a base color and base texture. Created the coastline. Repeated the coastline a few times and blurred it. Painted in the blue around the coast and gave it some ripples (I have the ripples going onto the island to symbolize the very shallow water over the island). Created the initial frames for the scale and map/cartographer information (I’ll worry about the actual map border a bit later – hopefully won’t regret that). Finally, I created a top grunge layer.

Image 4: Initial Island


Next, I brought the fort into Photoshop.
Gave everything a red fill and black stroke. Found a free chain brush pack and a free watercolor brush pack. Added some chains and splatters for quick effect (these won’t stay). Damn that was a sloppy cartographer!

Image 5: Island with Fort (current version)


In the end, there will be two versions of this map, one a cut away showing all the rooms in the fort and one without. Obviously still very much a WIP but I’m happy with the initial results. In addition, I must have learned more than I thought with my first map since I’m not using any tutorials with this one! Therefore, I will again give a bigh thanks and kudos to both Pasis and Jezelf! I learned so much from their tutorials!

Making Maps with Photoshop by Jezelf
Creating Mountains and Other Terrains in Photoshop v1.5 tutorial by Pasis

As always I’d love hear other member’s feedback, comments, advice and tips! Please chime in (even if brutal).

Thanks for looking!
A.J.

[ajrittler]

Well, had some time today to work on this. I quickly realized that what I wanted to emulate did not match with what I have the talent TO DO. A bit discouraging since I really like the two maps that were my inspiration for this one! After a bit of embarrassing results I decided to go a different direction...sort of. I've seen the Town and Village Tutorial by Lerb previously and thought it might be a good time to try it.

Here's where I'm at today. I really would love to know what you think so please feel free to chime in here!

[Falconius]

I think it's looking pretty great. And am loving the step by step detailing of how its getting done. I don't know why you think your inspiration maps are unachievable since it seems like you're succeeding so far, at least to me, but I'm happy to see the progress no matter which way you go with it. It's a cool little map.

[ajrittler]

I think it's looking pretty great. And am loving the step by step detailing of how its getting done. I don't know why you think your inspiration maps are unachievable since it seems like you're succeeding so far, at least to me, but I'm happy to see the progress no matter which way you go with it. It's a cool little map.

Thanks for the feedback and positive comments Falconius! I'm hoping to document as much as I can during the process.

When looking at the James Island map (my inspiration) I gives me the feeling of a more "professional survey" map (if that makes sense) while my current draft seems to have taken a bit of "cartoonish" look. maybe i'm being too critical.

Either way, I hope to have more done and posted tonight!

[ajrittler]

My ADD kicked in today so I didn't get much done on the map. Actually, I think it was a good thing I stopped now. After creating the few objects/shapes yesterday I decided to create a new project entirely for shapes/objects such as barrels, crates, trees, wells, etc. In the long run it makes sense now. These ones I did not do in Illustrator, though I probably could have.

I started with my ballista since the first pass was kind of atrocious.

First, I started with some basic line shapes.

Base Shapes


Next, I positioned those into the rough shape of the ballista and merged them together. Then added a stroke, inner glow and drop shadow.
Base Ballista Shape


Finally just used a 1px hard brush to give it some texture. (I'm no artist and using a mouse kind of sucks! )
Finished Balista


I redrew my catapult as well basically by doing the same thing. I tried to draw some different palm tress so I could yank out the bushes/trees near the north terrace, but I'm not at all happy with them.

What little I got done on the actual map today. Moved the chimneys. Added some texture to the rock/shore just to see what might look good (or not). While there wouldn't be a well on the island I figure they would have a couple of barrels to collect rain water, so I added two of those. Last I swapped out the catapult and ballista for my new ones (the new one is a BAB - big a$$ ballista!)

As always would love to hear what you all think! Pointers, advice, criticism, etc!
A.J.

Current Version

[Robulous]

Intriguing, I like the overall style. Though as a professional nitpicker I have a few observations

Is there a reason why north and south are inverted? I'm assuming this is a coastal defensive fort but the military context is unclear to me. I'm assuming the seaward side is to the left (east), with the martello tower having a field of fire in that direction, expecting fire from the southeast (top left). Are the chains protecting an inlet?

The barracks building looks a little odd as it's not rectangular, and the squared windows(?) are on the inside. The Fort James example (built to defend the mouth of the Gambia River, as I recall) makes it a bit more clear what's indoors and outdoors. I'm not keen on the inner and outer glow lines around the island - for the water it might be fine but coming inland it looks like contour lines (intended?), meaning you'd have a very flat island (not inconceivable).

The James Island map also has fortifications right around the coastline on the defended side. From a tactical point of view it would be possible tho bloody to land men on the "southern seawall" side in small boats and assault the terrace. Building defences hard against the sea prevents this but would be more expensive, so it would depend on and how strategic the site is.

I'm intrigued to see that Victorian map has shadowing - the number of times I've been told that's inauthentic on Victorian style maps! But I guess the effect is subtle there.

No slave quarters in your map? Ah, the good old days of empire...

[ajrittler]

Intriguing, I like the overall style. Though as a professional nitpicker I have a few observations

Is there a reason why north and south are inverted? I'm assuming this is a coastal defensive fort but the military context is unclear to me. I'm assuming the seaward side is to the left (east), with the martello tower having a field of fire in that direction, expecting fire from the southeast (top left). Are the chains protecting an inlet?

The barracks building looks a little odd as it's not rectangular, and the squared windows(?) are on the inside. The Fort James example (built to defend the mouth of the Gambia River, as I recall) makes it a bit more clear what's indoors and outdoors. I'm not keen on the inner and outer glow lines around the island - for the water it might be fine but coming inland it looks like contour lines (intended?), meaning you'd have a very flat island (not inconceivable).

The James Island map also has fortifications right around the coastline on the defended side. From a tactical point of view it would be possible tho bloody to land men on the "southern seawall" side in small boats and assault the terrace. Building defences hard against the sea prevents this but would be more expensive, so it would depend on and how strategic the site is.

I'm intrigued to see that Victorian map has shadowing - the number of times I've been told that's inauthentic on Victorian style maps! But I guess the effect is subtle there.

No slave quarters in your map? Ah, the good old days of empire...

Great that’s what I’m looking for and thanks for helping out Robulous!!!

The only reason north and south are inverted is laziness on my part. I will be changing the orientation. I hope get that done later today. Correct, the seaward side is to the left (east) and the chains do run across the length of the harbor (not sure how realistic that might be).

Yes, the building is not a rectangle, which I found a bit strange as well. The barracks building on Fort Denison (the fort that mine is designed after) on isn’t a true rectangle.

That is the roof of the barracks building not the interior. I will be doing a second map that shows the interior rooms, etc. of the tower and barracks building. Those rectangles on the roof aren’t windows they’re supposed to be chimneys. I guess I need to clean those up a bit.

Yeah, I wasn’t sure I should have the inner glow on the land. I thought I’d try something different to show how shallow the water is over the land there. I’ll remove it.

No, no slave quarters on this map. There wouldn't be a need. Just a small fort to protect the harbor.

Fort Denison Images - To show the fort that I designed this after. Remember, this is for a D&D campaign.
Fort Denison 1


Fort Denison 2

[Robulous]

Aha - actually it makes more sense realising the island and fort is really tiny, I should've realised from the trees, which I really like btw.

[ajrittler]

I've had zero time the past two days to work on this...until tonight. Rotated everything 180 degrees so north is not at the top of the page. I'm so used to looking at it the other way this doesn't look right to me! �� oh well!

I tried something different with the roof quickly. Changed the color and added a gauze texture. Meh. I have to lower the opacity or remove it all together. Still have to draw in the roof texture.

Here's what I have - thoughts?

[Robulous]

Looks good