September 2009 Entry: Passage of Time - Woadsbury

[töff]

Well, maybe I'm disqualified because I actually (barely!) started this map before the announcement, as part of a collaborative project in my local writers group. But I'ma thread it as a WIP anyway.

1 & 2 - This is pretty much where I was when the challenge was announced: our chosen site in England on the River Ouse, and Buckingham palace set in for scale for the baron's castle on the hill.

3 - Added a terrain heightmap with a gradient ramp*. The idea is, the baron's castle sits on a hill overlooking the town. There is a sheer cliff dropping from the castle's prominence down to the river. There will be bridges upstream and downstream from the cliff.

4 - The first gradient ramp sucked so I redid it. Much happier with this approach. Added a little elevation scale to the side, also. Is 65ft a good height for a modest cliff face?

5 - The grayscale heightmap.

* I learned about the Gradient Ramp feature thanks to Cartographer's Guild! Been using Photoshop literally since 1990, and I keep discovering new features! I also learned about the Shape Burst here. Keep the tips coming, CG! Yu guyz rawk.

[Gandwarf]

As long as you aren't submitting finished maps that you did before the challenge, everything is OK. Thanks for participating. Now knock my socks off

[Ascension]

65 sounds good enough to me...too tall for scaling ladders and towers to be used, in a sense it provides some protection and the wall on top can be thinner or shorter there plus it gives a little flair. Flair is good.

[töff]

Flair is the idea, yes. I don't want a Peter Jackson cliff. I want something imposing but believable.

[Steel General]

Good to see you jumping in on a challenge Toff!

[töff]

06- I've ditched & redone my Google Maps landgrab. It wasn't big enough, especially to the north where I need the town to spread some. Instead of just extending it with another Google Maps screenshot, I went and got Google Earth and stitched together four screenshots. It wasn't much better than just regular Google Maps, really. Just more fun.

07 - ... which means I had to redo the elevation map, again, which I don't mind because it's fun painting up thousands of cubic yards of earth with a photoshop brush. You guys ever move any earth? I mean, like with a shovel? It is seriously hard work. And I build all the Woadsbury elevations while sitting on my couch, under the A/C.

08 - Screenshot of the gradient ramp colors and the Curves Adjustment Layer. I drew ten straight lines in the Curves, to give the gradient that stair-step effect. I suppose I could have posterized my elevation grayscale, but then I'd have to keep posterizing it every time I edited the terrain, or I'd have to keep choosing different shades of gray to paint with, meh. This is way easier. Plus, any time I want, I can draw eight lines in the Curves Adjustment instead of ten ... or twelve ... whatever. This is totally the easy compartmentalized way to go.

09 - I have it in mind that I want to do six distinct "time snapshots" run along the bottom of a general area map. I'm not sure I'm happy with the layout, but this is what I currently have. I want to do not only the castle, but also the town, as they grow. Ugh, I hadn't intended to do a whole town map here yet, let alone six town maps. Ugh. My projects have a way of exploding in every direction, and I end up making huge concessions just because of time. We hates it, precious; we wants infinite time to work, yes!

10 - I'm including an "area cheat" in the top right corner: southern England, and a zoom-in of Woadsbury and the county seat, Northampton. I have room under the area cheat to put some notes, or maybe just the title. Who knows. I don't know.

[Ascension]

Terraforming and digging ditches is much more enjoyable when one does not have to leave the comforts of the couch This looks nice.

[töff]

Well, I want to do the evolving castle & town on different layers, lined up so I can see them. But Photoshop does not allow layer options for a SmartObject (like InDesign allows for a placed graphic) dammit ... so ... I think what I'll do is set up a layered Photoshop file, and then just use layer comps and save down flat JPGs. Workflow!

[töff]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8nBxOBykoU

[töff]

So I did a fancy forest, and added a series of roads and trails ... and lost all my work UGH. Not sure how it happened. Somehow, I closed a SmartObject without saving the changes, I think, who knows. Might have been due to filling up my hard drive. Sheesh. Approx two hours down the toilet. What a feeling!

Anyway, I went back and redid the woods, and also added a stream from the forest. I need to do the roads elsewhere, anyway, because they will change over time, which is the aspect of the challenge, anyway! ... and btw, what's the deadline? Sep 30?