Cinzienne (large, late-medieval city)

[GreatWhiteNorth]

The building construction continues, and I paused to work on the pavement layer that will appear under the buildings. This is y first attempt to make my own seamless pattern, and while it didn't turn out perfectly seamless, it shouldn't be too obvious with buildings placed over it. That said, I'd be interested to hear opinions about that layer and it's over aesthetic. I've also roughened the rivers a bit and tinkered with the color. The bottom image is the whole city sans the cobblestones, which wont be covering everything, obviously.

Cobble Focus.jpg

Cinzienne 5.jpg

[Ilanthar]

I'm a bit disturbed by the strong colours of some buildings, but this is shaping nicely GWN!

[feanaaro]

The city layout looks great, and so does the background terrain. I concur with Ilanthar in that the strong colors of the buildings do not mix well with the rest though.

[Frenchie the DM]

I believe the color choices are just to indicate districts / specific buildings?

In any case, I enjoy it very much - especially the the small fort / tower at the tip of the peninsula.

[Meshon]

I also use horrifyingly bright colours when I'm working. They will go away once this reaches the appropriate stage.

GWN, a few thoughts for you.
Your pattern looks good but unfortunately suffers from the usual issue which is that it doesn't look like streets, more like someone built a huge stone platform and then built the city on top of it. Cobblestone streets have direction to them, but it is hard to show on a map. There's no easy answer though. I'm still trying to find a way to do this for large maps that I really like. It's also not something that you have to worry about.

That pattern would be aces for small scale maps though.

The second bridge from the left, the one in two parts, would probably angle towards the closest point of land in its bottom half.

Edit: Oops! I was typing on my phone and managed to post this before I was done. Too many thumbs...

I really like your terrain, the city at the confluence of rivers is totally appropriate. I'll be interested to see what that extra bit of city wall at the top encloses. Will there be more city along the south side of the river? Keep up the great work!

cheers,
Meshon

[GreatWhiteNorth]

Thanks for the comments everyone! Yes, the horrifying colors will be going away. The especially bad ones (bright pink, etc) are to indicate "special" buildings, and the other colors will become more muted/textured, less saturated versions of themselves (they will be tiled buldings), with the exception of the paler brown color, which indicates a wooden building.

Meshon, I actually used the beginning of your cobblestone streets tutorial for my pattern, but given how large the city was, I decided that adapting it for a Photoshop repeating pattern would save me significant mental anguish when compared to using it as a stroke. However if I'm nearing the end of the map and I think it might look better as individual strokes I still might try it. So, thanks for your work on that tutorial!

Edit: and yes there will be more city on the south side. It is the newer section of the city, and accommodates a larger percentage of the city's wealthy.

[GreatWhiteNorth]

The north side of the river is finished, and I've begun work on the south side. This should go quicker, unless I get distracted and change something else about the map. Here's a 72 DPI overview.

Cinzienne 6.jpg

[GreatWhiteNorth]

For the most part, the buildings are now drawn. Here's an overview of the city, as well as a sneak peek at what the completed buildings will look like with the cobblestone background. Next, I'll be adjusting the colors of the border, land and river - for some reason I'm just not satisfied with them - and painting in the streets.

Cinzienne 7.jpg

Buildings Focus 2.jpg

[Larb]

I like the bridge on the left. It will be nice to see how it looks once you have all the rooflines and shading done. It's going to take a while though I imagine!

[arsheesh]

This is coming along nicely. I too had a concern about the color choice but it looks as if you will be addressing that. Look forward to seeing the completed map.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh