September-October Challenge: New York Reclaimed

[Alcairdazar]

Hi. I have been a member of this website for a short amount of time, and in that time I have remained nearly completely silent and unseen - following tutorials in my spare time. I have now decided I would like to be a more active member of this community and thought I would start off my entering my first ever challenge.

My concept is an arial map of Long Island, several thousand years after civislisaiton disentegrated in that area of the world. Long Island, in my map, will be occupied by humans who have reverted to living in huts and hunting for food and survival. The name for this map will be "New York Reclaimed", due to the fact that nature has all but reclaimed this once metropolitan area. WIPs will follow.

***Latest WIP***
new_york.png

[Alcairdazar]

WIP

long_island_outline.png

A simple outline of Long Island. It's not a great job, but it doesn't need to be as it is just a guide to my map.

[mearrin69]

Heya. Welcome to the Guild and have some rep for jumping into the biggest challenge ever with both feet. Looks like a lot of us are doing post-apocalyptic maps this time around and I look forward to yours - which might be a bit less grim than some of the other entries. Good luck!
M

[Juggernaut1981]

Welcome aboard. I feel the need to rep-noodle you for just rocking up and having a crack at the prize. Best of luck it will be a VERY tough competition.

[Alcairdazar]

Thanks. Well here's my new WIP, it's still pretty basic, so I'm thinking of ways to improve it. It's just some trees with bump maps and colours pretty much at the moment.

colours_with_trees.png

Any advice would be very well appreciated thanks.

[Alcairdazar]

Sorry about the absense on WIPs. I've been busy doing school work and investigating a bussiness opportunity. I'll be carrying on with the map the day after tomorrow as my school holidays start.

[Alcairdazar]

OK, new WIP

new_york_wip.png

It's just the same as the old one, just with different trees and a new ground texture (both based on RobA's reigonal fantasy map tutorial). I was planning on adding a few ruins of skyscrapers, but unfortunately realised the map was too zoomed out. Any advice would be welcome thanks

[Avengeil]

I like the ground texture that you are using, it looks a lot better than the past wip.
But I don't really like the trees, their color is a lot better than the previous wip's but they are a bit too fluffy and looking like small hills in my opinion(just my opinion though *shrugg*)

[carabosse]

I like the idea of focusing on Long Island. It's a more natural geography than the way the city is divided politically.

For some inspiration, you might look at the Mannahatta mapping project. They went back in time instead of forward, but it included research on the original ecology of the area. Perhaps some of the ancient species would return?

http://welikia.org/

[Alcairdazar]

I'm back.
I've been busy with other things over the past week or two and I have not had time to work on my map. Now I'm back to wroking on it, and i have even come up with a few ideas. I was thinking about having the current map on a parchment background with a brief explanation on the area designed for a King or Emperor who plans on attacking Long Island. Also I was thinking about having the largest barbarian town (even though it barely deserves that name) on the parchment. Following is my basic plan for the village/town.

scan0002.jpg

Do you think it's suitable for a primitve village? Should I add more things? Make it larger? Remove things? Any advice would be welcome thanks.

@Avengeil
Thanks. I see what you mean about the trees being 'fluffy', although they don't look like hills to me. I'm not sure how to fix the 'fluffiness' so I'll just leave it be and may fix it up when I'm done.

@carabosse

Thanks for the idea. I don't really see anyway to incorporate it into my map though, except for maybe mentioning a large population of a certain animal, naming the Barbarian tribe the 'Beavers'. I will look into it though. Thanks again.