Manzil, a desert town

[ARockabillyRhino]

Hey folks, for my first WIP post, this is Manzil, a town on the banks of the biggest river running through the Calabran desert.
The city was a little fishing village until a few years ago, when two tombs were discovered in the area, bringing adventurers, scholars, traders, and an influx of business.
It grew next to an island in the river, which allowed easy launching of boats in between, without worrying too much about the current.

This is my first town map, and one of the first maps I've worked on. Not much of an artist, so learning how to draw on the fly. As such, any constructive criticisms would be much appreciated.

Hu-Tin_City_01x.jpg

[Wingshaw]

This is a nice start, Rhino, and I'm looking forward to seeing how you finish it. I'd say your drawing skills look just fine, to me.

The main critique I would have is simply that there is nothing about the map right now that looks like a desert: the buildings look very northern European, the large river. Maybe colour will change that, but I'd have perhaps gone with a different architectural style to convey the desert location (eg. Archensheen by J.Edward)

Hope that is helpful and keep up the fine map-making

Wingshaw

[ARockabillyRhino]

Thanks Wingshaw!

I appreciate your taking the time to comment, and for the crit. It's really helpful as I wade through this mad process.
Unfortunately, I spent all night drawing even more houses that look a little out of character for the environment. Due to time constraints, I'm going to keep them for now, and see if I can make it all work with the color scheme I paint with.

I'm not sure how these WIP posts normally work, so I'm just going to post my status each time I spend a few hours and make good progress.

Hu-Tin_City_01@1x.jpg

So here is most of the village houses done. I hope it doesn't look too cut and paste, I drew about 18 buildings and used those until there were about 40. The church to the West took me a while and I am quite proud of it. The last piece I need to do is the bazaar in the South West corner (you can see I accidentally left the road sketch for the bazaar where it will be).

Lore wise for the city, the buildings do look pretty European (I partly blame my drawing skills, I surprised myself by going beyond squares with triangles on top). I'm thinking this place, since it is outside of the major desert cities, and located on the lush river banks, may have been a gathering spot for north Europe style expats. They brought their architecture and a bit of culture, but used sand stone and reeds to build the houses. I already had a Swedish themed citizen in mind as the blacksmith, maybe I could just expand that.

Aaaaanyways, keep the comments, critiques coming!

[Larb]

Just post your WiPs whenever. I think people appreciate more incremental posts more anyway as you get a better look at people's process and can learn from it.

I think it would be worth doing a little path to the front door of each building like you've done with some of them. It will make the buildings all feel more connected to the village road network in my opinion.

[ARockabillyRhino]

Thanks Larb!

I was thinking the same thing. Those pathways were testing the look out, and I agree that they help with cohesion.

I finished the bazaar and like the look of it, and have spent the last two hours figuring out how to draw trees. I'm half way through coloring the river, and will post a progress pic when I'm done with that ( so it doesn't look toooo half-baked).

I have the next few days off work so expect a lot of updates!

[ARockabillyRhino]

Hu-Tin_City_02.jpg

Update for the night:

Finished the bazaar (I really like how it turned out), flatted the river, and did initial flatting of the road. I added the background color to the rest of the map, but it isn't anything final, white was just hurting my eyes.
I added some rocks and painted those, which hopefully adds to the desert vibes. Also spent about three hours trying to draw palm trees (who knew this would be the hardest part!). I forgot to hide the prototypes so you can see them in the north east corner.

The north west corner looks pretty barren (it is where I am drawing all my prototypes). This is because I am planning on putting the legend there.

Let me know what y'all think, this is my first time hand painting anything, so I could use advice!

[ARockabillyRhino]

Update:

manzil_05_ground.jpg

Finished-ish the houses. Not sure I like the dark brown, it's not very desert-y. For now, it contrasts pretty well while painting and is easily changeable in photoshop.
I flatted three different color schemes for the houses, and with different level of shadows, I'm hoping that is enough to provide variety in the houses.
I'm really happy with how the church ended up.
The road does not have enough detail/shading on it, and it is 'floating' above the ground. That should be fixed by the next update.
Also started with terrain painting. I like the sandy color, but the town should be pretty lush, being by the river, so I'm going to add grass and reed color soon.

As always, all c&c is appreciated and asked for.

[Steel General]

I'm assuming they are stone/adobe-like buildings? Id so I would think they'd be more the color of the sand/etc.

But this is coming along nicely.

[Rochnan]

Hi ARockabillyRhino,

I like putting the European styled houses in a desert environment, as that's a rare thing

There are some real-world locations that you can draw from for inspiration though:
Historical Malta is a nice bridge between Italy and Africa
Likewise, medieval Cyprus places western architecture in a warm climate
And let's not forget Italy's Sardegna has the Piscinas desert

I hope those images/links will help you

[ARockabillyRhino]

Hi again everyone!
Sorry for being so absent while you all have been so nice and helpful! Real world got in the way of my very realistic goal of making maps for 19 hours a day forever.

@SteelGeneral, you are totally correct about the roof colors being... just no good. I'm planning on changing the hue, it was just easier to paint with higher contrast colors.

@Rochnan, those are great links! A lot of the architecture is pretty set in stone at this point, as I have a soft time limit on this map (and I just graduated from stick figures a few months ago!). But they have given me two things: great inspiration for world-building, which I definitely need right now, and a sudden urge to move to Malta, which I also need right now. It's much appreciated friend.

Speaking of, totally not necessary, but if anyone has a quick bit of lore or world-building that they want to add to Manzil, I would love to hear it! Right now it is a tiny fishing/crossroad village in a North Africa themed desert, but it has recently been thrown into the real world and is struggling with its first growth spurt. I will be using this map in a RPG I'm setting up for some friends, so the more inspiration the better!

And here is the update. Updates, rather. First up:

manzil_06_grass.jpg

I added green to the map! I'm colorblind so that was harder than you'd think. The land around the river floods most years, and as such, the soil is fairly fertile, especially the first few hundred yards around the banks. Hopefully my shading gives that impression, but PLEASE help if you know any hot painting tips in that regard. I also spent way too much time shading the road to embed it into the background a little.

Second up:

manzil_07_legend.jpg

Not much changed except I added a legend. Most of the areas I made up while writing, so none of them are set in stone. Just wanted some interesting places for my friends to explore. Keen eyed and nerdy cartographers might recognize the name of some Pathfinder pantheon members, I'm using them because coming up with a bunch of fantasy Gods is way less fun than spending all my time drawing lots of geographically inaccurate homes.

But the real big deal here is that I drew that parchment. Like by hand! Might not seem like much but I'm so dang proud of my little paper buddy there, I'm not kidding when I say it was stick figures last July. Really, getting into map making has been such a cool way to get my creativity out, I wish I had found you guys years ago!

Now that it seems to be wrapping up, here is what I would change, if I had lots more free time:

• It feels a bit empty in some spaces. I'd like to add more ground texture, so that the sand and grass don't look SO painted on. Also a lot more rocks and little barrels etc.
• The map doesn't communicate that the river is giant on the right side of the island, which is a big part of the island's ethos.
• I really wanted to add farms. Most of the farms would be off map along the river, not in the city centre, but just to show that the land is fertile there.
• And yeah, the freaking houses look like log cabins....

Thanks for all the hot tips, and for letting me use this thread as a journal after two long weeks learning photoshop. I probably only have one more update before I need to finalize the map for the game, which will be the new house colors. I'll definitely keep working on it after, if'n I hear any feedback.

See ya soon!