Reply With Quote
Lookin' good so far, MM!
GP
Edit: I was hoping someone would use the approach of Tanaka's Challenge May Map to get some idea on what the map might look like - its looking well.
August Entry: Oten-jo by MM
This is a layout I'm working on in Illustrator. I've still got a way to go, but I'll discuss my approach.
I've curved the river a bit to match the larger map, and placed a bridge at the northern side of town that leads across to a scattered farmland and fishing villages. (It seems a few people are placing their bridges to the south, but I think that might make shipping more difficult, not to mention storms could pull away docks and sweep them into the bridge). GP's map only has one residential district, but I have added another smaller residential area on the southern side of Oten-jo assuming that residents often spread outward in all available directions from a city.
I have laid out most of the Downtown District in a grid, but have taken steps to make approaching the Castle difficult by forcing potential visitors to backtrack and cross small bridges over canal and river, then wind their way through the Samurai District and ascend a road alongside fortified walls to get to the Castle Gate.
The Castle and Samurai District are surrounded by a defensive wall, but I'll probably add another smaller wall around the Downtown and Merchant districts.
On a side note, I've tried to incorporate a scaled down version of GP's street layout for the chase through the city. You can even see the little cove on the far side of the river. In fact, I sort of built outwards from the chase area to give me a better feel for the city in general.
Nice start!
Lookin' good so far, MM!
GP
Edit: I was hoping someone would use the approach of Tanaka's Challenge May Map to get some idea on what the map might look like - its looking well.
Last edited by Gamerprinter; 08-04-2009 at 11:26 PM.
Gamer Printshop Publishing, Starfinder RPG modules and supplements, Map Products, Map Symbol Sets and Map Making Tutorial Guide
DrivethruRPG store
Artstation Gallery - Maps and 3D illustrations
Fantastic start. Wonderful layout and good reasoning for it as well.
My brain is still trying to figure out what to do. I can only hope to get the puzzle pieces together. It has not helped that I have been completely swamped this entire week but hopefully next week adn I mess around.
Good Luck.
I was out of town for a few days, but now I'm back and throwing myself into this fully. Here are some buildings I'm drawing up in Illustrator. I've looked through dozens of images of Japanese buildings, temples, and castles and learned a lot about their architecture, and have attempted to make specific structures (such as the castle, temple, and gate buildings), as well as modular roofs to piece together throughout the city.
I've also done research on a few other interesting aspects of Japanese art and mapmaking, but I need to get back to work on the layout first, so I'm going to save those as surprises for later.
Nice work so far MM!
This is another thing what makes this challenge so hard: the Japanese architecture. It's the reason why I didn't take a stab at this challenge.
Check out my City Designer 3 tutorials. See my fantasy (city) maps in this thread.
Gandwarf has fallen into shadow...
Adding buildings to the map. The Merchant District is mostly done, but it's slow going because I'm drawing each building in Illustrator and they have a lot of detail (too much really for Illustrator to handle in mass, so I'm working in pieces). In addition, it's tough for most of the structure's I've designed to bend around corners that aren't 90 degrees, and to complicate matters most Japanese buildings are built with roofs that angle towards the street, not to the sides like a lot of western architecture.
### Latest WIP ###
This is starting to look very good MM. The castle especially looks great.
Check out my City Designer 3 tutorials. See my fantasy (city) maps in this thread.
Gandwarf has fallen into shadow...
I agree, lookin nice.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Here's another update for my version of the city. I'm about 70% done with building placement, which I figure is the hardest part of this project for me. I'm working at 11x14 at 300dpi, which allows me to put a lot of detail in the buildings and street layout. I'm spending a lot of time imagining the city at both street and rooftop level, and I've tried very hard to crunch buildings together within the walls of the city, but also place them so that each one can be entered from the correct angle. A ninja would love all the alleys, side streets, and rooftops to sneak around with.
Anyway, I only have a little left of the Downtown District to design, and once that's done the rest of the structures should be much easier. Then I'll paint up the river, trees, and terrain.
### Latest WIP ###
It's coming together quite nicely. I really like the clean look of the houses as it makes the map really stand out from the rest of the participantsCan't wait to see how the terrain river etc come together in the final version. Good work!
Posting Permissions
