I think I can turn this one into WIP thread. This city exists in an old fantasy world of mine (maybe 10 yrs old now?), but the city was never really important enough to be more than a dot on a world map. Late last year there was a challenge concerning colonies, and since this is a colony in that old world, I decided to finally sit down and make an attempt.

http://www.cartographersguild.com/ma...e-kessila.html

There has not been much movement since I developed it for the monthly challenge, but I thought it would be nice to show you guys some of the odd bits this map has collected during and after the challenge. First up is the process I used to develop the building plans shown in the challenge. They were based on the Duomo/Insula, and I find it a fun kind for plan to draw for some reason. In the latest I can find for my bldg plans, I've ripped out a few blocks of Kessila and begun redeveloping them in a more haphazard fashion, to add some much-needed variability. Here you can see some of the buildings still being drawn.

colony3-3-Bldgs.gif

I like to start from the outside, with the rooms that touch the street becoming workroom/shop areas measuring roughly 10-12 feet square. Inside of that are a layer of rooms with similar dimensions, maybe 8 or 10 feet square that serve as larger storage areas, service rooms like kitchens and stairs, and household offices. Inside of that is another layer, this one of smaller storage rooms, roughly 6 feet square that are open to the inner atrium, which acts as the kind of nucleus that the whole building wraps around. Keeping to those dimensions makes the upper floor fairly easy to lay out as bedroom or bedroom suites that wrap the atrium on the upper levels.

Here are a few bits that were actually worked on during the competition month:
colonytopo25b.jpg
That is the furthest I got with the perspective sketch I was going to add, unfortunately it only took timing those 3-4 buildings to realize that it would have taken me a month of hours to make just that drawing. Still disappointed I have not found a fast digital technique for this.
nertherrew copy.png
This was the north arrow I was working on, I really liked what I did on the inside, but the outer rings and pointy bits still need some work.