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I was thinking about it as I was working on the map, and I now recollect most of the thought process.. I was originally not going to enter anything at all, I was rather busy with a number of other projects. I finished most of them and found myself casting around for ideas (still working on the city map on and off but i need breaks from it). Then I looked at the Kaidan challenge again, and thought maybe I could jump on with somethng a little more off the wall for something fun. I was originally starting off with an antique style map - I had the shoreline for the river done up and was working on the other waterways when I took a break and went looking for actual antique japanese city maps. I found a few, and they were all in a perspective style that I'm not particularly familiar with doing, and was dreading the attempt. While i was looking at one in particular and pondering, that's when it hit me - why not??
I'll likely run some aging techniques on this when it's completed to do that antique effect that started me off on the journey
I think the longest part of the process is combing through google looking for good source material - buildings that are the shape i want and at the angle I want. I'm not an architect by any means, so when I'm sketching out, I need a pretty accurate model to work off (at this stage, anyhow).
I started off by taking the initial concept layout for the city on it's own layer and strecthed it out, then perspective distorted until I got the angles I was after, and this was my underlying guide. I played around with the Vanishing point filter for a bit until I determined it would take me longer to get the hang of it than I was willing to put in right now, and started working with paths and straight up brush strokes. The entire map (piece?) consists of using the spatter size 59 as a basis, and various sizes and fade options. To keep myself honest, I made a new brush set consisting of just that brush and the 19 hard round for erasing (I thought of using the spatter for erasing too.. but that might be going too far). I'm waffling about aging it at the end, it's kind of nice in it's stark grayscaleness
oh, and I did redo the copy/paste clones of the buildings and bushes - as soon as I redo the mountains, it will be 100% original strokes throughout. Yay!
