City Attempt: Iramir

[feanaaro]

This would be a major city in my world (see: http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...illustrator%29 the city would probably be in the south of the large island in the north of the central "inner" sea).
It is my first attempt (again) so I am particularly open to suggestion and critique.
In particular I am concerned with:
- size: the city should be big for an ancient standard, but not enormous. More like Athens than Rome. Notice that the small buildings in the five "circles" are all 1-story houses, mono or bi-familiar, while the other houses are generally taller (2-4 floors) and more densely populated. Would you say that roughly 100thousand is appropriate (I still have to add some buildings, and other stuff around the city, like more trees, gardens, villas, cultivated fields, etc)
- streets-buildings ratio: most of the city has very narrow streets, because of population density, but perhaps I exceeded in that, what do you think?
- scale: at this resolution 2px = 1m (it is 1px=1m in my working file). Perhaps this makes most buildings too big, do you think I should say 3px=1m (1px=0,75m in my file).
- colours: I believe that most pre-modern cities have nearly every roof of the same colour, perhaps because they had limited access to different materials. Do you think I should conform to that? I used different colours because I wanted to emphasise the difference between the five "circles", the tower and the big central building (currently used as a big library/arcane university) which where built in an immemorial past by some kind of "precursors" http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Precursors) and the rest of the city, which is more recent and more "mundane". But perhaps the difference would be obvious enough without using different hues.

Let me know.

Iramir.jpg

[Steel General]

I think this is looking quite good so far.

I think you're fine using multiple roof colors (my opinion), it helps to 'break things up a bit' so it's not a big blob of 1 color.

[feanaaro]

After some more work.
Unfortunately, while rotating the image I messed with the size and did not notice until too late, so now I am not entirely sure of how many pixels correspond to how many meters. However, because the scale legend was added before the error, that at least is still right.

Iramir.jpg

[feanaaro]

Here it is, more or less finished; though I would probably re-do it again when I will be more proficient with PS.
I also added a version with a more uniform roofs colour, but it does not look very good.

Iramir.jpg

Iramir2.jpg

[Larb]

This is looking pretty amazing. My only critique would be to avoid using triangle-shaped buildings, or at least those with really acute angles. But that is the only thing I can think of. Oh, and your sea texture looks a noticeably repetitive. It might be worth adjusting it slightly so it looks a little more random.

[feanaaro]

Larb, you are very right. I was lazy in both cases. Will correct both.

[feanaaro]

Added some labels, changed the sea texture and removed some acute triangles.

Iramir.jpg

[Sapiento]

How do you the coloring of the single houses? Each separately?

Great looking map!

[feanaaro]

How do you the coloring of the single houses? Each separately?

Great looking map!

This map has indeed turned out a bit messy because I was using different ways as I learned them (it is my first city-map, I am trying to be more "regular" for the other one, Maëren).
However in the beginning I drew each house as a poligon (very wrong, don't do it that way), rasterised, and then filled each one with a pattern. Later I started filling larger squares with patterns, then erasing streets and other blank spaces, and finally filling some houses with different patterns to differentiate. In other cases, for larger building or isolated houses, I drew each one with the square or round brush, and then coloured separatedly with the desired pattern. So, for the most part, I did the colouring each separately but with some shortcuts.

[Sapiento]

This map has indeed turned out a bit messy because I was using different ways as I learned them (it is my first city-map, I am trying to be more "regular" for the other one, Maëren).
However in the beginning I drew each house as a poligon (very wrong, don't do it that way), rasterised, and then filled each one with a pattern. Later I started filling larger squares with patterns, then erasing streets and other blank spaces, and finally filling some houses with different patterns to differentiate. In other cases, for larger building or isolated houses, I drew each one with the square or round brush, and then coloured separatedly with the desired pattern. So, for the most part, I did the colouring each separately but with some shortcuts.

I had thought so. I still have to find a way to make coloring with this technique easier, too.