WIP Hawkhurst (Town Map)

[FeralBuddy]

01Hawkhurst.jpg
This is a map of a town I've been working on in my spare time for about two weeks now. It's about halfway done.
The more tutorials I've read, the more I've gone back and either changed or added to the map. This is my first digital map, so it's a learning experience.
All of the buildings are made one-by-one, drawn in photoshop. Obviously this takes WAY longer, but for this map I like individualizing the different buildings. (The legend is gonna be long. ) And I guess everything else is just textures and shadows.
I was inspired by the map that comes with the OGL Wild West. The buildings are scaled similarly.
Although it's incomplete, any C&C offered would be appreciated!

[Larb]

Zee buildings, zay are floating. I wish there was an actual realistic shadows plugin for photoshop (perhaps there is, maybe I should have a search). But anyway, what you'll probably want to do is go in and "finish off" the shadows by hand by connecting the corners of the buildings to the corners of the shadows. Apart from that, it is looking good so far!

[tilt]

looking really good - and I agree with Larb, some of the buildings float. While drop shadow is fast to apply hand drawn (or copied from the building layer) shadows takes the map to the next level. Personally I'm more for less "bright" colors for building roofs, but thats just a matter of taste. Have some rep with my +8 hammer of neat repping for your first map
and by the way - posts in a WIP thread are supposed to be incomplete - those thread are for input while you work - so of course we'll C&C you till your ears bleed

[FeralBuddy]

shadows.jpg
Haha, thanks Tilt.
And I see what you both mean about the shadows now.


So this is what I have so far. I think I'm having trouble with proportions, because the newer buildings seem a little big compared to what were supposed to be big buildings from the first draft. Other than that, I like where it's going. That open area to the right is going to be a park.
Do you think the roads are a good size compared to the buildings? I was thinking 1 pixel = 1 foot. So the roads being 14 pixels (I'll change that later to 15 pixels) makes a 14/15 ft road. But I haven't counted the pixels of the buildings. It looks okay to me, but what are everybody's opinions?

The city is near a desert, so it's a hot, dry place. I'll modify the grass to show that once I get to the fine details. I'm shooting for a ~2000 population. I've been using Medieval Demographics Made Easy as a guide, but I see this world being more advanced. Assuming 5 people per building (is that a low number? Maybe 10 instead?) and there are maybe 145 buildings (assuming I didn't count anything twice. lol) that would be 725 people so far.
I'm not sure about technology level, but I'm thinking near the Age of Sail (about 1700s or so), maybe with more Victorian architecture. I don't know. Maybe. Thoughts?

To the bottom left, the black building is the undertaker. And I was gonna put in a cemetery. How big do you think that should be?
The big white building near the river was supposed to be a library, but (and I guess this depends on technology level) I'm starting to think the town might be too small to have one. I'm not sure if I want to change it or now.

Also I was wondering if smoother looking roads would look better.

Well here's draft 2:

01Hawkhurst.jpg