August Entry: Oten-jo by CoyoteMax

[Coyotemax]

And now for something COMPLETELY different.

[Steel General]

And now for something COMPLETELY different.

I'll say... that's certainly not what I was expecting when I saw the post.

[Ascension]

Very stylish. Nice.

[Coyotemax]

Well, i took the spirit of the challenge as challenging myself as well.

Believe it or not, i've never done anything even REMOTELY like this. Plus i'm learning a few new wacky things in photoshop, like the Vanishing Point filter... and MAJOR brush tweaking. This is all done with 4 colours and a single brush!

I mean i can draw celtic knots like nobody's business, but I don't sketch things like this. Ever. I do wish i had a tablet for this though.. this is about 90% mouse, 10% paths

I don't even know if it's something that would be considered as the city map, so if it's completely off base, I'd be ok with moving and renaming it into the city/town WIP area.

I'm not even sure where this urge came from. I suspect it was while I was vaguely considering doing a map for the challenge, and went looking through japanese art prints for maps Heck, I wasn't even going to enter, but that was the result of about an hour's work. Here's the next 3 hours


### Latest WIP ###

[AslanC]

That is one sexy piece of ink work! That's what it looks like, you just got out the brush and the ink pot and off you went.

Nice

[Ascension]

You might want to put a heavier stroke around those houses, especially the roofs, to bring them out a lil more. I didn't even see them for about a minute and then was like "what are those things oh I see, neat".

[Jykke]

I like the castle a lot. Looks very very cool This will be an interesting project to follow.

[Coyotemax]

Ascension - you're right about the samurai district, I'm not really sure what happened there, the strokes weren't as dark as they should have been, and I was working close up so i hadn't really clued in. is fixed now, and it's really coming out. thanks for mentioning that

The temple district was like working with a pouting child, it really didn't want to go where I wanted to take it, but we ended up compromising Not entirely happy with the road though, that'll likely get redone a bit as i play. I was going to add a railing to the bridge, but it was looking too messy.

I do like the gateway though

I was drawing every stroke by hand up to this point except for the small hills (no cutting and pasting in the samurai district, believe it or not) but I've started reusing some of the bushes, and the temples. I may rebuild the extra bushes and copied temples from scratch though, maybe even redraw the hills so I can honestly say it's 100% brushwork No layer effects either! (except for stacking the outlines over the shading, and such)

This is actually quite a bit of fun, i never thought it would be possible for me to do this.

### Latest WIP ###

[Ghostman]

Not very useful as a gaming map, but would sure make an awesome illustration to go along with a more conventional map. I hope I'll get to see it finished!

[Gandwarf]

This is certainly different... and unexpected as you are coming late to the challenge. Very nice though!