First City Map!

[emmarosetait]

I just finished my first city map. I don't usually do real places but I made it as a gift for a friend who is a city councilor in Winooski (and is constantly talking about how great it is).

A couple of WIP photos
IMG_2181.JPGIMG_2179.JPGIMG_2182.JPGIMG_2192.JPG


And the final map
IMG_2193.jpg

[XCali]

Nice one. A good first city

Good trees, and I'm super glad you are not afraid of using darker shadows with them. It makes them pop. Could even give some shadows to the buildings if you want to go the extra mile.

I only have a few notes. The almost straight lines at the edge of the city at the top is a bit distracting. Maybe having a softer transition there would have helped. (To be fair, the bottom and most of the right side's transition is more dynamic.)
The other point I would make regarding city maps, I know the real world aspect comes into play, unlike tighter nit communities, suburbs tend to have buildings spaced from each other. Though, I can't help but feel having most of the buildings with that much space between each other looks odd. It might be the lack of like small dotted lines that represent fences, or some small dots and random draw marks that would have given them some more character.

I'm going into finer details. For the reason that, like all my maps, there is always some way to make a map more interesting.

P.S. City maps are a ton of planning and small details, great job! I know a lot about the effort.

If you want, you can check out one of my early city maps, when I was still doing the line art by pencil and then pen. It's a very early draft, since I started digitally coloring it after I scanned it and placing the lineart layer on multiply. But, it gives some idea how just by playing with building variety and spacing and also when the buildings are clumped together in districts where space is scarce commodity, it can help breaking some of the hard lines of the city. (Thunder rock early draft 1 and draft 2 showing some shadows on important buildings.) (Hope this gives some ideas.)

[emmarosetait]

I only have a few notes. The almost straight lines at the edge of the city at the top is a bit distracting. Maybe having a softer transition there would have helped. (To be fair, the bottom and most of the right side's transition is more dynamic.)
The other point I would make regarding city maps, I know the real world aspect comes into play, unlike tighter nit communities, suburbs tend to have buildings spaced from each other. Though, I can't help but feel having most of the buildings with that much space between each other looks odd. It might be the lack of like small dotted lines that represent fences, or some small dots and random draw marks that would have given them some more character.

Thanks for the feedback! About half way in I came to the conclusion that I should have done a practice city first. The hard edge at the top is because that is quite literally the city municipal boundary, though I agree that I could have done a little more with the trees to make it less of a straight line. I thought about adding some more texture to the buildings and details around them but they were so small that I was worried I'd muddy the effect of the map. The whole map is only 28x28cm so those buildings are about 2mmx4mm. I think in the future I will do smaller cities or bigger maps!

[LunaticDesign]

very cool!

[KaiAeon]

Excellent work!

[Riothamus]

That's a great first map. Compared to my first map, it's really great art. To be honest, compered with my actual maps, it still is.

[Anghammarand]

Looks fantastic! I am curious about the WIP line drawings. Are those snapshots of the progression or did you get to a certain step and before adding the next level of detail wanted to retain a copy of that stage?

I know when I am drawing by hand I want to "save" my work, esspecially prior to adding color, so if I'm not happy with the result or I mess up, then I can go back and start from the line drawing.