Southerwatch - A Bit of Town Map Practice

[Stormhawk]

Wow I really love the colors you added to it and the amount of detail you used. It looks really good

[Bogie]

Wonderful map, great details.

[arsheesh]

Great practice map. Judging from its high quality the "real" thing is someting to really look forward too - if you ever decide to get back to mapping cities of course. ^^

Thanks Lyandra, I do intend to get back into city mapping, hopefully in the not too distant future. I learned a lot making this piece, and there are some things I would do differently next time around. For a practice map I am satisfied with the way this turned out, but I think I can improve upon the overall design.

Could you please share it ? I can't find any which satisfies me and yours is very gorgeous.

Well the thing is, it wasn't simply one or two layers, but several layers (some of which included layer masks that I worked on in order to blend them together) set at different layer modes, and at different opacities. The other thing is that the textures themselves were relatively small; I simply used the clone tool to clone them together in random places throughout the map. So I'm not sure that just giving out the textures would even be that helpful. However I do intend to continue to play round with city design, and if it turns out that I find a good way of doing cities in GIMP I may write up a tutorial on the matter and give out the textures and techniques at that time.

Wow I really love the colors you added to it and the amount of detail you used. It looks really good

Thanks Stormhawk.

Wonderful map, great details.

Thanks Bogie.

Thanks everyone for the feedback, it's been helpful for me. I learned a lot doing this map, and I intend keep working on improving this style.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[jtougas]

Looks great !! and gives me some ideas....

[Cunning Cartographer]

Fantastic map, technique aside this feels like a really nice little town, the layout works greats and the flow of it all is excellent. However...

You know what I like best about this map? The shadow the bridge is casting on the water. It's a pretty small thing, but the attention to detail of showing the arch really sells the whole map for me.

Looks awesome, dude.

Oddly this is the one thing that I actually didn't like. It's a general rule that unless it's murky water the light will cast a reflection, not a shadow on deep water (and if the water was murky it would be a much lighter/diffused shadow than that bridge casts). Also I think the arch is too pronounced and the shape should barely be visible; if the light source was closer to the bridge at the right angle then maybe, but from the sun it should be a more flattened out/straighter shadow that is a little tighter to the bridge. Though if there was a wall at the side of the bridge and the sun was setting on the horizon (ie. shinning directly side on) that is the shape of the shadow I imagine it would cast, at that gentle arch, so realistically I believe it would only be at that position that you would get that shadow, not from an angled top down.

Sorry to focus in on that, but as it's at the center of the map it just jumped straight out at me. Other than that I think it's an awesome map.

[Nazaire]

Really quite nice work. I especially like the trees.