Village Map - Iso (bird's eye)

[Ilanthar]

Beautiful map! I'm still amazed by the numbers of original & unique style exists for fantasy mapping .

[SharpPointyStick]

This is some flat-out gorgeous artwork here. Love it!!!

[MistyBeee]

Terribly nice, Randy ! As always, should I say

[Bretton]

Although I have to say that I didn't find your style as enjoyable as others at first, I must admit that it's growing on me. Your linestyle has something disturbing that catches my eye, and your compositions are interesting and full of character.
If I had to point something on this current work, there's something about the perspective that does not work for me as smoothly as I would wish. As if the general landscape and specially the trees would get smaller in the distance, but the builgings wouldn't. A closer look may partially deny this, but sill the feeling persists.

[Falconius]

That's an inherent problem with isometry. The trees getting smaller is an illusion, probably caused due to their very organic shapes and our brain tricking us into thinking that, whereas it cant really do that with the very geometric shapes of the houses. To me, almost all isometric perspective maps don't feel right (it wasn't always the case for me, it developed as my understanding of perspective got deeper and more ingrained). That said it is a map and isometry preserves the distances between points as well as has the advantage of keeping the things in the "background" just as clear as the things in the "foreground", things which, for a map, is generally more important than pictorial realism IMO.

[Bretton]

That's an inherent problem with isometry. The trees getting smaller is an illusion, probably caused due to their very organic shapes and our brain tricking us into thinking that, whereas it cant really do that with the very geometric shapes of the houses. To me, almost all isometric perspective maps don't feel right (it wasn't always the case for me, it developed as my understanding of perspective got deeper and more ingrained). That said it is a map and isometry preserves the distances between points as well as has the advantage of keeping the things in the "background" just as clear as the things in the "foreground", things which, for a map, is generally more important than pictorial realism IMO.

Hm, I'm not sure about that. Although I can undestand your point that some projection systems may be tricky, isometric projection is a quite straight forward one, and its rules are pretty easy as well. The disruption in isometry happens in angles, not in lengths, although maybe that "illusion" you speak about may happen in some vertical formats.

I think my perception problem in this particular case comes from the fact that trees have not been drawn in isometric projection. And neither has the landscape or at least key parts of it (the ravine, the cliffs). Of this I'm almost positive, as you should be seeing the top of the trees and hills if you were to follow the rules of isometry. And the general layout seems to follow the rules of linear perspective. I think the weird feeling I spoke of comes from this combination of elements in isometric projection and elements in linear perspective.

Of course, this does not mean the drawing is not a great one.

[Falconius]

I think my perception problem in this particular case comes from the fact that trees have not been drawn in isometric projection. And neither has the landscape or at least key parts of it (the ravine, the cliffs).

Hmm... Yes that's a very good point. It's pretty interesting the way this affects the perception of the work. Glad you were able to pin point that.