Black&white big city

[feanaaro]

This is just a first sketch to see if the style could work. It is super-simple, as you can see, but that could be helpful for such a big city (1 px = 2m at the present scale, and there will be stuff outside the walls too).

The city is part of the world I am mapping, llike most of the works I have posted here, but the style is very different.

What do you think?

Eryasse.png

[jbgibson]

It looks like a great start to me. There's plenty of 1700's - 2000's city maps in that general vein - you'll be able to tilt it toward one era or another with details, fonts, and such.

[feanaaro]

Some little progress, several very small tweaks, and an old paper look.
The world is fantasy, the technological level is similar to our antiquity. The city is the one at the mouth of the greatest river of the world, so it gathers a lot of commerce both from the inland and from the sea. It is therefore amongst the biggest and richest cities of the world, but apart from that it has nothing exceedingly "special", not too much arcane secrets, magic or whatever, is a normal commercial city, built by normal humans for normal humans.
Do you think that the street plan is decent enough? I would like it to give the unplanned/organic impression, but at the same time the site is very flat, so there is no reason to put in too many serpentines and the likes. Also, the end result will have of course more open spaces than what appear from these first sketches.

Eryasse.png

[Lukc]

I think the street grid looks fine, no problems at all. And the style of the map is quite beautiful as well.

[feanaaro]

Update. Still a lot to do, but having completed a couple of neighbourhoods, the general look of the finished city should start to be apparent.
Not sure of how the labels look, but beside that I am not displeased by my work so far.

Eryasse.png

[Lukc]

That looks pretty good. What software are you using? And what process? It looks like the city "blocks" are layers with a drop shadow, but I can't be sure.

[feanaaro]

That looks pretty good. What software are you using? And what process? It looks like the city "blocks" are layers with a drop shadow, but I can't be sure.

I am using photoshop 5.1 and nothing else for the moment (though perhaps this style would better be done in Illustrator).
It's very simple, the "common buildings" are all together in a layer with drop shadow (with some noise which is quite lost at this resolution but can still be seen in larger shadows), a 1px 75% opacity black inner outline, and covered by a pattern (one of those boundled with PS, incredible as it may seem to those who really know how to use the program, i have been unable to fetch myself one that looked better). Going from blocks to single buildings is mostly done by subtraction, erasing.
The "notable building" are the same, only with a stronger outline, no pattern but a ligh grey colour and bigger shadows.
Streets are simply white stripes with 1 px outline.
Labels are made with Belwe Lt font, with a 4 px white outline for making them stand out from the underlying city parts.

So, not much to explain, very basic.
One problem is that, though this particular city is completely flat, I would not know how to render elevations in this style, and also I am not sure of how to do cultivated land, of which there will be some outside the walls.

[feanaaro]

Is it possible to edit the thread title?

[Gidde]

A Community Leader can edit it for you; what would you like to change it to?

[Korash]

I like where this is heading, but I gotta say that I always have to giggle a bit when I see this map....not gonna tell you why....might get slapped upside the head...

As for showing elevations on a map like this, have you thought of using hash marks(or whatever they are called..short parallel lines running perpendicular to the contours) or even faint contour lines proper to show the elevations...?