This is a project that has been sitting on my shelf for the past year (or longer?) that was mostly an experiment. I wanted to try sculpting or modelling a map, so I made this. I built up plaster on a perfectly smooth tile and did a little water running while it was still wet to try and for realistic water formation, wasn't totally successful but wasn't a total failure either. Anyways I made a bunch of tiny building molds (at a scale of 1 millimeter to 1 meter) and made a bunch of plaster buildings and made this town. The town was more of a test for a larger city map to see what would work or what wouldn't, so really it is a generic (southern European or Mediterranean style base) town. Anyways after sculpting the town I tried taking pictures of it but never really moved forwards with it, and so it sat. I wanted to get some unfinished projects off my table though, and decided to start with this one so I picked it up, and tried to dust it off as best I could and labeled it and finished it as much as satisfies me.

I wanted to try and keep a clean sort of minimalist look, originally I wanted every thing to be a bunch of whites, I tried it once or twice with greyscale photos and it never look right, and the colours just seemed to work better. The fonts I used aren't ideal, but they serve. What I was looking for was something clean but still with a sense of period that the map is aiming for (late medieval-ish, like 1500's or so), these fonts are mostly a compromise. I've always really loved J. Edwards road labeling style so went with a (poor) copy of his style. Unfortunately for me his building labeling conventions didn't quite suite this project, but they did lead me to putting the labels into the map as opposed to using a number system. Some of them are perhaps a little unclear as to which building they apply but I like the overall look, so cest la vie.

I did actually find the sketchbook page for this town, but it had none of the information I had thought up whilst sculpting it (place names etc.) but I did remember what all the buildings were supposed to be. So without further ado:

PhotoTown1.png
(The colours don't quite match the original, they are warmer than they appear in this png)