8 City Maps by Black Hawk Cartography

[Josiah VE]

Hey everyone,

It's been a little bit since I've posted but I'm currently working on a series of 8 city maps of capital cities of an absolutely enormous world map for a DnD campaign I completed awhile ago. I posted a WIP of one of the cities a little while back.

Because 8 cities is rather a lot of cities to make and cities can be extremely time consuming I came up with a technique for the buildings that gives an impression of relatively detailed buildings but is actually very quick to make. I make use of a modified version of Torstan's (Fantastic Maps) dynamic building brushes. Feel free to ask me about the technique if you're interested in more details, it's actually really quite simple.
It allows me to make the cities quite quickly especially now that I am getting a hang of the style.
The maps didn't have to be too detailed so I didn't want to waste a lot of time drawing individual buildings but I also didn't want to make it as simple as just city blocks.

Here are three of the city maps so far. Text and labels will be coming after.

Let me know what you think!
I'll use this thread to provide occasional updates and new maps.

Flamekeep_CG.jpg

Monm Urg_CG.jpg

Wroat_CG.jpg

[wminish]

Really nice maps. I particularly like your use of shadow, it adds a lot of depth to the scenes.

[J.Edward]

Nice work, Josiah
Those are all quite nice. I like how vibrant they are.

[Tiana]

Nice shapes! I like the detailed docks.

[Adfor]

They're beautiful, love the layouts and the aesthetic of the color scheme(s).

IR

[Josiah VE]

Thank you so much for the comments everyone, I really appreciate it.

Here's the start of the next map in the series. I think I went a bit overboard on size, but I'd really love to hear any feedback on the building aesthetics specifically. This bit took more than half a day of work, so in terms of time this style is not overly consuming.

Let me know if you have any comments or criticism.

Note: Ignore the random walls and towers on the right side of the map, that's where I can grab them from during the process, I'll erase it later.

Nevond_draft.jpg

[Josiah VE]

Here's an update on the latest map in this series, Nevond. I was given very little information for this map so I had the freedom to design it as I wanted. I decided on a partially walled city complex built on a river system with multiple islands and some sprawl on the mainland.

By the way, in case anyone's deterred from mapmaking because they don't have the expensive tools for it, I am currently using a setup of an small dell laptop (not at home right now) with an ancient Wacom Bamboo Capture graphics tablet and photoshop CS2. It's probably time to update.
Let me know if you have any comments.

Nevond_draft.jpg

[QED42]

Those are some serious cliffs going on there!

[Josiah VE]

Here's another map in this series of cities, Waterdeep. I'm trying a more aggressive texturing approach on this one, and I really like the results so far. I might go back and do some additional texturing on the previous maps.
The different colored buildings are to depict the different wards of the city, how does it look?

Let me know if you have any comments or critiques!

Waterdeep_CG.jpg

[XCali]

I am impressed. They are all well made. I especially adore your Waterdeep map. It drew me in!