City of Tallon Map, Facelift

[keithcurtis]

Hey folks,

My commission schedule finally has slowed down enough to let me work in a few personal projects. I've been working a lot with painted-style textures, and have applied that to my pet city project.

The full map is here.
To give you an idea of what has been done, here is a before and after comparison of some of the tiles:

Before

After

[RPMiller]

I'm loving the effect on the vegetation. Not so keen on the buildings though. I think it softens them too much and the fact they are buildings becomes lost to some extent.

Speaking of farm land. I need a decent looking seamless tile of a cultivated field. If you can offer any tips can you PM me so that we don't derail the thread?

[Robbie]

Thats a HUGE improvement to something I thought couldn't be improved upon. Your maps were some of the best functional maps I've seen...with this now they've gone beyond functionality and you've gone right after my own heart which is the artistic side of cartography...because you can't have cARTography without ART.

That was pretty cliche sounding huh?

[kalmarjan]

Very nice.

Unless I miss my guess, the furrows on the fields were done with a slight bevel?

Sandeman

[keithcurtis]

RPMiller
Thanks, the buildings were one of the last things I changed. After I had gone more paint-textured with everything else, they really stood out as a vector-based texture. Basically, I took the texture, pasted into photoshop, added a drop shadow, and a bevel, to make them look roofed. At the current magnification, they look a bit more lumpy than I would like. Perhaps a bit of an outline would make them stand out as individual objects. I'll have to be careful not to make it overall too dark, though.
See below for the furrows.

Arcana
Thanks! Yes, now that the functionality is there, I can work on the prettiness. I really can't add too much more detail, or important things will be lost in a sea of trivia.

kalmarjan
I considered a bevel, but they're tricky in Illustrator. They also take up rendering time. Also to keep down the render time, I didn't want to go with a drop shadow on each object. Each one is basically a multilayered line, saved as a Style. The top line is dotted and bright green and very narrow, the crops. The next line is a duller green-solid and round-ended, the row. The bottom layer is the same green set to Multiply (and thus darken the ground texture behind, with a slight offset down and to the right. At the resolution at which it is displayed, it simulates a rounded furrow without the necessity of using raster Effects.

[kalmarjan]

Praise X2!

You did this in Illustrator? You got some rep from me JUST for that. I just cannot seem to get the hang of Illustrator, I am more of a Raster guy. (PS and stuff.)

Sandeman

[keithcurtis]

Praise X2!

You did this in Illustrator? You got some rep from me JUST for that. I just cannot seem to get the hang of Illustrator, I am more of a Raster guy. (PS and stuff.)

Sandeman

A combination of Illustrator and PhotoShop. The bulk of the work is done in Illustrator, and in fact the previous map was entirely Illustrator. The current maps uses a lot of textures created in PhotoShop, imported into Illustrator as patterns or objects. It's much, much easier to make changes, both individual and global in Illustrator.

Had I done the project entirely in PhotoShop, there is no way I would have tried the facelift.

[Talamar]

What the hell?
This one is really really awesome.
Something of the best I have ever seen. I love that.

[RPMiller]

RPMiller
Thanks, the buildings were one of the last things I changed. After I had gone more paint-textured with everything else, they really stood out as a vector-based texture. Basically, I took the texture, pasted into photoshop, added a drop shadow, and a bevel, to make them look roofed. At the current magnification, they look a bit more lumpy than I would like. Perhaps a bit of an outline would make them stand out as individual objects. I'll have to be careful not to make it overall too dark, though.
See below for the furrows.

I think that would be a good direction. When I look at the larger circular, and rectangle buildings they really stand out as buildings so I think that a bit of an outline would definitely give the smaller buildings a bit more definition.

It really is a tough call though. Going back and looking at it again, I'm liking the buildings a little more, but I still go with my first impressions. That said, I still love the vegetation changes. Those are just beautiful and gives the landscape a lot of character.

[pyrandon]

I'm backing up RP's assessment, Keith: the colors are much more pleasing to the eye, and the grass/fields are awesome. But the buildings are too blobby; IMO worse than the original--although I see why you changed the style to fit the new map. I wonder if sharpening as you've said will help--as well as doing something so the roads do not seem "floating on top of" the structures vs. between them on the ground? Shadows and such would help, as would blurring the roads. A similar situation occurs with the walls & towers: they are still too vector in my mind to fit the more organic style of the rest.

Just some ideas, Keith. No matter what you decide to do this will still be an amazing map!