June/July 2016 Lite Challenge: Maplehurst

[Barek333]

Ok, so a minor update, changed the grass a bit due to suggestions, finished the roofs and realized there are a few minor details I forgot to color but that will be done in the next update. Currently I'm trying to find out a nice way to shade the big maple trees, hopefully I come up with something nice

### LATEST WIP ###
jun_jul_16_6.jpeg

Cheers,
Barek

[ChickPea]

It's looking great. I've had a hankering to do a village map again, but haven't had time. This map is not helping!!

[snodsy]

Like the roof tops much better more in line with the illustrative style nice job. I think the house and trees both need shading.

[Bogie]

Looking very good, I like the new grass coloring. I think I would like the trees better if the raspberry color was darker or more muted. On my monitor it is very bright.

[Barek333]

Thank you ChickPea for the nice comment. Agree with your points snodsy. Your monitor must definitely be bright Bogie But yeah in hidsight I could have made them darker but well I'm rolling with it.

Anyway all the shading and the shadows are added as well as fixing the little things. Now comes for me the hardest part, border, information boxes etc. I added a title and the town emblem and am totally not happy with it. Help!

### LATEST WIP ###
jun_jul_16_7.jpeg

Cheers,
Barek

[ThomasR]

That's some nice shading !

[Barek333]

Thanks thomrey

So yeah my issues with the border and so on aside I added the first of three or four images that will explain the dark secret of the town. I am not very good at drawing but I gave it my best shot

### LATEST WIP ###
jun_jul_16_8.jpeg

Cheers,
Barek

[Barek333]

No suggestions or critique? I'm a bit stuck here :/

[Abu Lafia]

Hey Barek, for borders, i played around lately with the "LineDings BRK" font, which consists of fitting ornament patterns and endpatterns. If you're heading for a parchment-style legend, i often used Max's great mini tut about parchment scrolls (well, the whole thread is pure gold imo! ).
A simpler option (i did the title background parchment on my latest Grant & Karst map this way) is just making a rectangular selection, than "distort" it (not too much!... it's called distortion in Gimp, no idea how it's called in PS...) and use the freehand selection tool (set to "subtract from current selection" to add some more "cuts", etc. Than you can fill it with parchment texture(s). I prefer to stroke the edge of the parchment with a rotating white fuzzy brush, set to overlay, to lighten it up a bit, but this part needs a bit of experimenting . A general reference for this kind of stuff (i also do my coasts this way) is Torstan's awesome tutorial about layer effects and stuff.

Now to the map: The title is really contrast heavy due to the green background an the "raspberry" titlecolor. Maybe making the background another color, or lowering the opacity helps here. Not sure if "kerning" of the type is needed, since the letters are overlapping a lot, snodsy usually knows much about this stuff and i totally trust his judgment there

The illustration looks really creepy, and makes me curious about the secret! I'm not a help with drawing characters, but i think you could add a little shading there too (the principles are the same i guess).

The town itself, as i said already is looking superb! Nothing to criticize

Keep up the great work!
Cheers,
AL

[Barek333]

Abu just so you know I repped you for this extremely helpful post. especially the LineDings thing is amazing and even if not used gives so many ideas

And I agree with your comments on the title, text and shading of the image(this I would have done, was just too late in the evening when i finished with drawing )

Thank a bunch, have some things to try out now. Two more days I think I have to finish things up

And thank you for the kind words.

Cheers,
Barek