Gervasa
This is the most recent version of the map for a city I have used in fantasy games since the mid-1990s: Gervasa. This version is done in Photoshop, using techniques inspired by pyrandon.
I am not happy with it. I like the general style, but the water is a little too brightthe land is too homogeneous, and there is too little contrast between the buildings and the background.
This map is not actually complete: I want to add docks and piers, and other such details. However, I am done enough with it to know that I am dissatisfied, so I do not actually plan to finish this version. I will be drawing a new version once I have decided what I want to do differently.
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Now that's a city! Holy smokes. The water is easy enough to tweak with some color airbrushing. The land could use some fields and forests. The roofs could use some color variation and that would take some time. I like it and would keep working on it.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Absolutely love this.
I agree with the others, so much potential here - don't scrap it yet.
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
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What do you dislike about it? Maybe somebody else knows of a way to fix it without having to start over. That's a lot of good work there.
Don't skip it. It looks like you have spent much work to it.
If you want to use it as is, play around with the effects, but not too much. Try to divide the city into districts and add some text.
I would use it as an overall map with a reference to a detailed city part in the same picture (sorry I don't know the correct term).
I'm with Ascension, Steel General and PlumCrazy--that is one nice city. It reminds me of the map for the city of Asylum in the World of Khoras (http://www.khoras.net/Khoras/Civil/C...um-Citymap.jpg warning 3 meg download).
I think there is quite a bit of potential with your map. A few observations that might help:
1. Do something with the roads over water to help them look like bridges (could be putting an outline around them, putting little posts on either side, etc.).
2. Clean up some of the artifacts on the map (if you go up the river and look north of the tiny road (the third road across from the south end of the river), there is a thicker road that appears to end in the river).
3. Add a very thick north-south road to the east-west road that runs through the city. Also, try thinning/eliminating out some of the smaller roads (I like the organic curving look that your roads have, but there are some areas, such as in the middle of the map, that appear to have too many roads.)
4. Try experimenting with increasing the building density in the center. I like how the density thins out as you get further from the center of the city, but the way the buildings are laid out on the map, nothing seems to resemble a city block (to see what I mean, take a look at this satellite picture of the old part of Florence--http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=43.77692,11.264763&spn=0.044001,0.1114 94&t=h&z=14 or the ancient city of Harar in Ethiopia--http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=9.311028,42.129521&spn=0.030068,0.0557 47&t=h&z=15).
5. One final tip--where are the markets? A city the size of yours will have at least 2 or 3 markets, with at least one being near the shore for seafood. Although there are open spaces in the city, it is not clear if they are markets or not.
I think your map has a lot of potential, keep refining it and I'm sure it will turn out great.
work in progress
I figured I would post a few images of the Gervasa map's progress. These are 1/10th the size of the original, and saved at a very low JPG quality. The map is still not complete, but I am much happier with it. I still need to thin out some of the thicker streets, add bridges, docks, piers, and several noteworthy locations such as the palace, the Plaza of Heroes, the Heroes Bazaar, and so on. And I think the river may need to be made wider. I am not yet decided on that.
These are not all of the versions of this city. I have or had older versions which were even more primitive, but I am not motivated enough to dig through my backups and find them.
Anyway, I thought someone might find this interesting.
Last edited by bblackmoor; 12-13-2009 at 04:48 PM.
Me: http://www.blackgate.net/blog
RPG Library: http://www.rpglibrary.org/
PBEM News: http://www.pbemnews.org/
I like that last one...reminds me of something I tried once but never finished.
If the radiance of a thousand suns was to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One...I am become Death, the Shatterer of worlds.
-J. Robert Oppenheimer (father of the atom bomb) alluding to The Bhagavad Gita (Chapter 11, Verse 32)
My Maps ~ My Brushes ~ My Tutorials ~ My Challenge Maps
Holy moley, you've taken Pyrandon's technique to a whole new level. This is magnificent.
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