July 2018 Challenge: Somewhere on Knightswall Road

[aeshnidae]

The first challenge I entered was last summer's random fantasy generator, so even though I don't have a lot of time I'm going to give it a whirl. Being part of the Guild community has really helped me improve my skills, and I appreciate these challenges because they prompt me to try something new. I'm trying something new here, too: top-down hills and grass. Oddly I've never done this before. I've been wanting to map the village of Hillside from my D&D campaign, so when I saw "somewhere on Knightswall Road in a nearby village," it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

July 2018 Generator Selection.jpg

[aeshnidae]

So like I said, I've never done top-down hills and grass. I've been experimenting with different blend layers, opacity, fill, and grungy brushes in Photoshop to get a texture that I like. I'm not there yet and welcome any and all suggestions.

### Latest WIP ###
Hillside v3 (sm).jpg

[bkh1914]

This looks like a great start.

As for the vegetation: It looks like the grunge brushes you are using have well-defined edges. Softer edges might work better.

Think of it this way, from 2,000 feet up, the individual plants become blurry. Grasses are a sea green with gentle variations.
Bushes and shrubs have a blurry outline because they aren't a solid mass of leaves - they're branches of varying lengths with leaves
and there's space between the leaves. The same applies to trees. And of course some of the leaves are in the shade...

I use GIMP which supports image hoses, so I'll use a brush that has about a dozen variations on a grunge texture
that paint out randomly, each one with a randomly selected shade from a gradient. And each image has varying opacity
throughout the pattern, giving it a variable degree of transparency regardless of the layer's blend mode or opacity.
But I have no idea of how you could achieve a similar effect in Photoshop.

[MistyBeee]

Amazing start, Aeshnidae !
I don't agree totally with BKH because I always considered a map deals more with symbols than reality, especially in this specific style, but the both points of views are valid, for sure ^^
What bother me a little (but I'm really picky) would be more about the different opacity you used for the bushes linework.
Maybe some light/shadow on buildings and hills would help to understand better the elevation, but I really like your grass texture, and the fort looks great !

[aeshnidae]

Thank you both for the feedback! I was inspired by Mike Schley's Phandalin but very much lack Mike Schley's collection of skills!

I was following the Fantastic Maps "how to draw grasslands" post, which recommends this grungy brush:
grungy brush.jpg

I had two shades of mid-green and turned on color jitter so the brush would randomly switch between colors. I had originally tried a really low opacity (the 20-30% recommended by Fantastic Maps) but it was coming out too light so I increased the opacity to 50%. Maybe I should have used darker greens at a low opacity? Apparently there is no "image hose" feature in Photoshop and no way to replicate it, which seems like a huge oversight (it would be helpful in this exact situation) and is clearly causing much consternation on the interwebs.

I haven't gotten to shadows yet and definitely need to decrease the opacity on my linework on the hills and such (and farms but those are in barely-draft form at the moment). I also need to futz with the linework for the roads. Normally I just stroke my roads but in this case I want them a bit fuzzier.

[bkh1914]

Hmmm....
I'd suggest using a fuzzier brush - the edges are just too sharp right now.
OR, hit the layer with a small Gaussian blur to soften those sharp edges.

Right now it looks like a watercolor painting done on dry paper that was jabbed with an barely wet brush.

Does Photoshop let you get the color from a gradient?
That would give you more color variations for a more blended look.

Earlier this year there was a thread about coloring grasslands. https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=40388
In particular, post #8 by Meshon presents another Photoshop approach.

[Bogie]

Excellent start aeshnidae, really nice hillside village. I would love to have it in a larger size/higher resolution to be able to see all the details, if possible.

[Ilanthar]

A nice start, indeed ! Is that an Umbrella corp logo I see in the top left ?

[aeshnidae]

Hmmm....
I'd suggest using a fuzzier brush - the edges are just too sharp right now.
OR, hit the layer with a small Gaussian blur to soften those sharp edges.

Right now it looks like a watercolor painting done on dry paper that was jabbed with an barely wet brush.

Does Photoshop let you get the color from a gradient?
That would give you more color variations for a more blended look.

Earlier this year there was a thread about coloring grasslands. https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=40388
In particular, post #8 by Meshon presents another Photoshop approach.

Awesome, thanks for the link! I don't think PS lets me grab a color from a gradient, but I'm certainly not a PS expert. I will most likely re-do the grasslands (the WIP I posted earlier was my 2nd grasslands attempt) but first I'll try the Gaussian blur, that's a great idea.

Excellent start aeshnidae, really nice hillside village. I would love to have it in a larger size/higher resolution to be able to see all the details, if possible.

Glad you like it, Bogie! I will upload a higher res image after my next edit, which will be sometime this weekend.

A nice start, indeed ! Is that an Umbrella corp logo I see in the top left ?

Bwahahahaha! Oh my, I had not considered that when I decided to make the large market tent red and white! Maybe I'll change it to blue and white. I don't need the Umbrella Corp. messing with the good residents of Hillside.

[Weery]

That's gas, I too saw the Umbrella Corp as having set up on the outskirts of the village Don't change it Aesh, have them conduct experiments that go horribly wrong!

It's looking great btw