House of the Lost Children

[Chronist]

The House of Lost Children, is a children's home, and a homeless children's school. It is just a few blocks from the Guildhouse of the Society for Exploration and Adventure of Maracasar. It is a poor and very dirty place for the lost and the orphans. And it has a secret. Some of the children have special gifts similar to the story of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.
This is the second map I'm working on - parallel to the guild house that I introduced in another thread. Here we have the first version of the ground floor. upcoming next is the upper floor, an attic and a secret vault below the house.
it will take some time before i finsh this, but the beginning is done.

[bkh1914]

A very impressive map with lots of details. I especially like the way you've done the desks and chairs in the upper left classroom. Each set looks unique.

A couple of rooms don't appear to have doors - the large trapezoidal room in the lower right; the rectangular interior room to the left of the trapezoidal room; and the bedroom in the lower left.

[Chronist]

thanks for the recognition and yes you are right... i knew i forgot something ...
i also made a background change and add a softly Edge Fade as"mouse" my teacher has instructed me

[Tenia]

Excellent map, so much details (privacy toilets, garbage piles, etc.), just : How do we enter into the spiral stairs ? By another level ?

[Chronist]

thank you ;-) i´m happy that u like it and yes u will enter from the first floor by a secret door - the stairs will lead you to the secret vault below the house where the giftet youngster will train their skills.

[Sotik]

That's a nice looking map, a lot of work went into that. Makes me feel bad for those kids, living in such conditions But I am guessing that is the feeling you want to lure out of people.

[Mouse]

Oh that's a lovely map!

You have a wonderful imagination

Do you mind if I make a suggestion?

I notice that you are using directional wall shadow effects to make the walls pop up from the drawing. This is ok, but walls don't really have that many outdoor shadows on them indoors, and it can sometimes make the floors look like they are on different levels. How about taking the Directional Wall shadow off the wall sheet and adding a very soft glow effect to the floor sheet(s) instead. You would need to set the glow up so that each floor has a dark edge (set the glow to inner and make the colour a dark brown or black). It doesn't have to be very strong - just strong enough to make the floors look lower than the walls.

Note: If your floor polygons just happen to not be touching each other they should all have a glow all the way around, but where the floor polygons are touching one another it may be necessary to duplicate the floor sheet (complete with the very same glow effect), and separate the touching floors by splitting them between the two floor sheets.

I haven't forgotten that this will leave you without a building shadow on the outside of the building. I usually cure this by adding a brand new sheet I call SHADOW CAST underneath the floor sheets, and copying all the walls onto it, then setting up the Directional Wall Shadow on that new hidden sheet. Its a way of getting the wall shadow, but not inside the building.

Quite separately from all that floor and wall stuff, I can see that some of the furniture has shadows and some of it doesn't. I don't have this symbol set myself so I don't know if you have separate chairs and tables or not, but if you do it might enhance the effect even more if you use the separate symbols where possible, so that you can add shadows or dark glows to taste without the cut-out effect you can sometimes get when you use combined symbols the way you have. In other words - I know its really difficult getting a good shadow effect on a combined symbol because I've tried and failed myself. The general rule is to use separate chairs and tables if you can - no matter how pretty the combined ones look

The trees could also do with a directional wall shadow effect, but make sure the shadow doesn't go over the wall and into the building

I feel really bad leaving you with a page full of advice, but despite these finishing touches (and they are really just finishing touches), the map is still beautiful

[Chronist]

@Sotik: i like that you see what i wanted to say yes the conditions are really bad

@mouse: i would nevermind any of your suggestions as you know i´m new in the world of cartographie and I am very pleased to learn what is needed to make good maps, it is my pleasure that the knowledge here so generously shared. i will find out what i can do with all your wisdom of mapmaking.

one of my personal problems is, that i live in two places that are about 600km apart and because I work on two computers, it always takes a bit until I can implement the respective ideas.in one week I work at the House of the Lost Children and in the other week at the Guild House of the Society for Adventure and Exploration of Maracasar, so as not to have the very problem with the maps and the individual links. That's why