Beginners Map

[Jegol]

Hello all, along with my first post this is also my first map. I hope to improve, and my biggest inspiration from here was from Pyrandon's Tutorial on Koppolex.

Without further ado, here it is.

Obviously, advice and such is welcome! In particular I think work needs to be done on the trees, rocklayer+elevation and probably the keep.

[NeonKnight]

That is a nice map. What was the program used to make it?

For me, my only thing is there seems to be a great many streets/roads in proportion to the number of buildings.

[Jegol]

Ah, forgot to mention. I used Photoshop CS2 along with the RPG City Maker, thanks to Pyrandon. I used most of his steps displayed in the tutorial. The city maker did make a lot of roads and I erased pretty much all of the major weird parts.

Other than that.. thats it.

[The Cartographist]

Jegol - Welcome to the Guild! I don't know how long you've been lurking, but this is a friendly and extremely helpful place to hang your hat. Hope to see lots of maps from you.

You should introduce yourself in the member introductions area for everyone to say hello.

Thoughts on your map:

- The buildings don't quite look right to me. Their color really jars with the ground surrounding them. (I'm sure that others will offer better insights into what the problem may be, and ways to fix it.)
- From the realism perspective (loosely defined in the fantasy genre), most towns would not have built walls around big open areas. Walls were costly both financially and in manpower to build, so only those things that absolutely had to be enclosed were. Now, that can definitely NOT be the case if there are reasons (magic or whatever) for it not to be. Just some food for thought.
- Agree with NK regarding the streets to building ratio.

Despite those comments, I think that it is a really nice map, and a map that could be in a professional document.

[Torq]

Nice Town Jegol and welcome to the guild. I think your layout is very nice. You clearly picked up some good hints and techniques from Pyrandon's map ant tut. I really love your trees, both the look and the distrivution seems very natural to me.

On the crit side I think your green for the normal ground ares may be a little strong (over saturated). Also the shadows dont seem to be continuos. The keep had shadows on the towers but the walls have no shadow at all making them look a bit like they are painted on the ground. I think just sorting out those two things will make a big positive difference.

Welcome again and have a great time.

Torq

[Jegol]

Thanks to all, have a quick question - How might you add buildings under the building layer, keeping them square? I just learned how to scatter normal brushes and such last night.. Would I use a square brush and scatter it or are their easier ways?