Westbridge: The East Stops Here
My second town map, riffing off of the wonderful tutorials found here on Cartographer's Guild. This particular map is for my home campaign, fleshing out a village in a pre-written published campaign book (Princes of the Apocalypse) that didn't have a map of the town included.
This particular town has no bridge, in spite of the name. There is no river. It is a "gateway to the west", and features prominently on a trade route that extends to the east from this locale. The town is a small farming hub (thus the disproportionate ratio of businesses to residences, and 4 temples/churches). The pre-written material doesn't describe Westbridge much (it mentions an inn and an orchard) so I was able to embellish with a giant cliff with a watch post, a mystic henge, and a variety of businesses. I imagine the town itself doesn't have a lot of people that actually live there, but there are a lot of regional folk that come to it to do their business. The biggest responsibility of what I imagine is a very small patrol of guards is probably checking on the town water wells every night.
My own personal challenge was to create a lot of hand-drawn elements, and I really dove into the cliff's shadows and highlights. I also tried to develop textures a lot more for this project outside of the Layer Styles tools with hand drawn brush strokes instead, especially on the roads and grass between buildings in the town. I tried to invest in details--a few hitching posts, a clothesline, and some water troughs and community wells. I even put in some lemons and apples on the orchard trees (if you can even see them...) I tried developing a key and numbering each building as well.
My biggest challenge on this project was managing the size of the file... Ha! But I'm learning. Every project expands my understanding of cartography and Photoshop by leaps and bounds.
Westbridge with Key copy.jpg
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