NEW Battlemap: Small Town

[Anna Robinson]

Made with a lot of Dunjinni assets, but i threw this together as my first attempt at a battlemap for my first campaign I'm running.

Hope someone finds it useful to use in their campaigns, and also appreciate any tips on making my second attempt better!

https://i.imgur.com/yPOME41.jpgyPOME41.jpg

[Mouse]

Hello Anna

This is a pretty good first map. Its actually quite difficult to get a whole load of elements created by many different artists to work well together because everyone has their own idea about how a tree or a house should look and be drawn - never mind any general differences of contrast and tone, but you seem to have done extremely well.

The only thing that jumps out a bit are the shadows. Where there are shadows on the mooring posts in the water they disagree with the shadows on the piers, which are on the opposite side of the object casting them. The shadows on the buildings are much less defined than the mooring posts, and the tree shadows are darker than the house shadows, which is usually the other way around. Trees don't cast as solid a shadow as a house because of the gaps in the leaves. There are also things that have no shadow whatsoever, like the vehicles, animals and the sculptures in the fountains.

Just tidying up the shadow situation would greatly improved the overall effect, but its still a great first map

[annarobinson]

Hello Anna

This is a pretty good first map. Its actually quite difficult to get a whole load of elements created by many different artists to work well together because everyone has their own idea about how a tree or a house should look and be drawn - never mind any general differences of contrast and tone, but you seem to have done extremely well.

The only thing that jumps out a bit are the shadows. Where there are shadows on the mooring posts in the water they disagree with the shadows on the piers, which are on the opposite side of the object casting them. The shadows on the buildings are much less defined than the mooring posts, and the tree shadows are darker than the house shadows, which is usually the other way around. Trees don't cast as solid a shadow as a house because of the gaps in the leaves. There are also things that have no shadow whatsoever, like the vehicles, animals and the sculptures in the fountains.

Just tidying up the shadow situation would greatly improved the overall effect, but its still a great first map

Great catch! Will definitely add it to my to-fix pile. Thanks for the great input!

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[XCali]

Well done. This is a really good battle map. You are off to a good start here. I love your water. I really do.

I had to look hard to find anything to nitpick about, so it just needs small adjustments.
One thing that looks a bit odd for me is the roads and cobblestones between the houses. It feels like there is a glass effect over them that is strange, I don't know if it is just me. That is about all I can comment on besides the shadow consistency.

Keep it up and have a lovely week.

[Mark Oliva]

Great map ... and maybe the best shoreline-water work I've seen yet!

With which program(s) did you make this?

[annarobinson]

Great map ... and maybe the best shoreline-water work I've seen yet!

With which program(s) did you make this?

Oh thank you I made it in photoshop CC. I just found stock images of waves, and cut out the foam parts, then merged a good few of them together and prayed

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[wdmartin]

I was going to comment that the map is awfully dark, but then I realized it's a night scene. So that's normal. I might suggest brightening it around the light sources in town. They've got some built-in yellowish glow, but it's pretty subtle and doesn't actually lighten any of the surrounding areas the way real light would. Try this:

1) Fill a layer with white (or another bright color, maybe pale yellow)
2) Set the new layer's blending mode to Overlay
3) Mask the layer out so that none if it is visible
4) Set the foreground color of your paintbrush to white, and the background to black
5) Using a large soft brush, paint a large circle around a torch on the mask. It should fade out at the edges.
6) Switch to black, and re-mask any bits that need to cut off the light, like a wall behind the torch for example
7) Adjust the opacity of the layer to taste.

If your image is already in a bunch of layers, you may be able to arrange things to minimize the amount of cleanup you need to do on areas that shouldn't be lit. For example, if you place your light layer below the layer containing your walls, then the walls won't get lit.

[Niztael]

The water has a great effect and I'm using quite a bit of coastal maps.