Gomboust: A Free 17th Century Urban Cartography Brush Set for Fantasy City Maps

[KMAlexander]

Hello everyone! A lot of folks have asked for this and today I’m excited to announce the release of Gomboust, my eleventh free brush set for Photoshop (and GIMP). This one’s quite a bit different, with a focus on creating fantastical urban environments as opposed to natural landscapes.

The signs and symbols within extracted from Jacques Gomboust’s 1652 map of Paris. It’s an interesting isometric perspective that often goes a little… um, quirky. But with a bit of familiarization, you’ll find it’s a fantastic way to render detailed fantasy cities. City maps are tough since most buildings are unique to their specific location. Finding a map that could be adapted into a brush set took some time. I’m really pleased with this one and excited to get it released and into everyone’s hands.



As with all my brushes, these are distributed under a CC0 license, which means they’re free to use for personal or commercial work, no attribution required! Let me know what you think, and if you end up using Gomboust, I’d love to see what you made.



You can read more about Gomboust and download the set over on my blog.



Detailed example:


examplemap_gomboust_color.png

Some of the symbols:


gomboustsampler.png

gomboustsampler2.png

Gomboust in use:
examplemap_gomboust_decorated-1.png

[Tiana]

These are cool, surprised no one's commented on it yet.

[DrWho42]

excellent as always with many of your posts

[KMAlexander]

Thanks, Tiana and Doc! I'm becoming a fan of these kooky ol' city maps. They're a bit more time consuming to build than topographical sets and a little more challenging to use, but I think the end results are convincing.

[W_Keystone]

These are a wonderful resource.
Thank you so much for sharing.

[Richiemuenster]

The overprint effect you added to the map is gorgeous.

[KMAlexander]

The overprint effect you added to the map is gorgeous.

I appreciate that. It's pretty easy to do if you have a tablet or something similar. I just use Kyle's Real Watercolor bushes and then adjust Blend Mode until it looks right. Historical sources were really messy with color, so I don't try to be exact here.