Harpy Island and Fort

[ajrittler]

This will be my second map. It’s a detailed view of Harpy Island that’s shown in my first map – Scuttle Island for the upcoming arc in my current D&D campaign.

WIP and Finished Map Threads of Scuttle Island found here:
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=34758
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=35237

From the start, I’ve always envisioned Harpy Island just like Fort Denison in Australia. A small island with a defensive fort at the entrance of Scuttle Bay. The only significant difference is the tower on Harpy will also act as a chain tower for the bay. (I’m not happy with the fort’s name so that’ll change when I come up with something better.)

Because of this, I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel ‘design wise’ and since I’m pressed for time, I used the following image from the “Fort Denison Sea Level Rise. Vulnerability Study” document provided by the Australian government as my basis.

Image 1: Fort Denison Sea Level Rise. Vulnerability Study

fortDenison3.png

My first map was vibrant and colorful. For this map, I wanted to do something different, a bit more traditional.

I really love the look and feel of these two maps so I’m setting out to emulate them. I hope that I end up kind of close, but no worries if I don’t because this is all about practice!

Image 2: James Island
James_Island_and_Fort_Gambia.jpg

Image 3: Fort Pitt
Plan_of_Fort_Pitt,_1761.jpg

As a lessons learned from my first map I started all the initial shapes in Illustrator vs. Photoshop. One, for me it’s just easier since I’m more familiar with Illustrator. Second, and more importantly if I need to scale the shapes in the future I can. Each piece is built as its own individual layer for future reusability.

First thing I did was draw my initial island. Fairly straightforward and simple.

Here it is:
harpyIslandBase_lowres.png

Next, I drew the fort. …and then I re-drew the fort again. …and then I re-drew the fort again. I’ve spent hours on something so simple! It’s not perfect, but it will do for now.

Here it is:
harpyIsland v2.1 Whole Fort_lowres.png

Once the initial shapes were complete, I brought them into Photoshop.
First, I imported the island. Gave it a base color and base texture. Created the coastline. Repeated the coastline a few times and blurred it. Painted in the blue around the coast and gave it some ripples (I have the ripples going onto the island to symbolize the very shallow water over the island). Created the initial frames for the scale and map/cartographer information (I’ll worry about the actual map border a bit later – hopefully won’t regret that). Finally, I created a top grunge layer.

Image 4: Initial Island
Harpy Island v1.1_BU.png

Next, I brought the fort into Photoshop.
Gave everything a red fill and black stroke. Found a free chain brush pack and a free watercolor brush pack. Added some chains and splatters for quick effect (these won’t stay). Damn that was a sloppy cartographer!

Image 5: Island with Fort (current version)
Harpy Island v1.1d.png

In the end, there will be two versions of this map, one a cut away showing all the rooms in the fort and one without. Obviously still very much a WIP but I’m happy with the initial results. In addition, I must have learned more than I thought with my first map since I’m not using any tutorials with this one! Therefore, I will again give a bigh thanks and kudos to both Pasis and Jezelf! I learned so much from their tutorials!

Making Maps with Photoshop by Jezelf
Creating Mountains and Other Terrains in Photoshop v1.5 tutorial by Pasis

As always I’d love hear other member’s feedback, comments, advice and tips! Please chime in (even if brutal).

Thanks for looking!
A.J.