Zhupalem - Woodland town

[Zenon]

(Wall of text ahead)

So I took a gander at some of the finished maps here, and I may have caught a map making fever; I really want to make something that's quality.

Thus, I'll try to take a more careful, planned, thoughtful approach to this map in order to increase the chance that I strike gold; or, at least, learn a lot. Of course, being relatively new to this artistic medium, it's best to take care in setting an achievable goal.

Weapon: GIMP

Vision: While gander-ing in the gallery, I really liked the realistic or pseudo-realistic maps like this one or that one. What I want to do, is produce a detailed, textured, or semi-realistic map of a town (medium sized settlement). So, try to zoom in on the example maps and try to imagine what that would like (perhaps due to the greater amount of regional maps than city maps, I couldn't find a city map which really encapsulated what was in mind's eye). I've had trouble with overhead relief in the past, so I won't include any elevation intensive items such as mountains or hills.

Planning:
-Since this is a medium sized settlement, I want this to have some concentrated community, with some rural sprawl.
-Using this article for some help, I want Zhugalem to rely on hunting, (some) fishing and trade for food, and using lumber as a main export. This means that there will be some decentralized entities which do lumber; there will be a decently sized river for fishing, and there will be decentralized entities which hunt.
-I had used a Conlang to help create the name "Zhugalem" (meaning 'tree place'). The language is based on runes and magic, so if I could include some magical aspects, I wouldn't be dissapointed. However, I'm not sure how to do that...

Design:
With the planning in mind, I sketched a few general plans for the design of the town.
(use the image as reference)
-Blue: The River. I'm not sure how I want this to scale yet, but for a source of some fish, the river would be fairly large. I'm thinking that Zhugalem could be settled on a wide, slow part of the river (to help facilitate the water's usefulness to the city). Perhaps the river could be 1/4-1/2 mile? Does that sound reasonable and seem to match the current map? I'm thinking the flow of water would be eastward.
-dotted black line: road. A city would lie southward, and villages would lie northward.
-Purple: main concentration of population. This is where the people of status live, where most of the trade happens, where the craftsmen's shops are.
-Red: a rural 'suburb' of Zhugalem. This is where a decentralized concentration of population lives. These people would be the hunters and the fishers and would live less sophisticated lives, yet would have some semblance of civilization.
-Orange: this is where the lumberworking happens.
-Green: Farms. I don't know if I'll include this in the end, but I could fill some negative space if necessary with farms.
-Cyan: Again, only if I need to fill in negative space; but If I can figure something out, I could put some magical features in this space.

Forest townR2 v1 con.jpg

Progress so far:
I used the render plasma, colorize, bump mapping, and layer settings to create the parchment texture. It doesn't hold up too well upon close inspection; however, I like the zoomed out feel of the texture.
I used some plasma layering and the selection by color to create a randomized tree border. I then fiddled and fiddled with GIMP features to create the tree texture. I then overlay-ed some black and white to provide some sense of depth to the forest.

Questions:
- Just curious, but how long does it take to produce a map? If that's too vague a question, what's the longest you've ever spent on a map?
- Does the tree texture look good? I can't decide if I want to keep it or discard it.
- What do you think is a good scale for this map? I'm a bit tentative on the scale of this map. Looking at what I have right now, it's certainly a bit zoomed out as compared to other settlement maps; which often focus mainly on the major concentration of population. The establishment of scale make have an effect on the forest borders, which may necessitate a rework of the entire forest; so I'd like to figure this out right now, before I do anymore work. I'll be doing my own research on this, but I'd like your input as well.


Any comments, advice, critiques, or concerns? They are welcome and I would appreciate them



*Edit* I messed up the spelling in my thread title. Could a moderator (or someone like that) change "Zhupalem - Woodland town" to "Zhugalem - Woodland town" in my thread title?

[Eld]

Hey Zenon,

nice start here. I'll try to give some answers to your questions.

1) That's a very vague question, comparable to "How long does a marriage last?" From some hours to years everything's possible. The longest I spent on a map is since 2012 and still not near completion, however, I only work on it very irregularly. I guess I spent some hundred hours of work on it, probably 500, definitely 300+. Shortest map was maybe 2-3 hours.
2) I do like the tree texture. I'm a total noob on this style of mapping (it's awesome but far beyond my skills) though I think you could keep it.
3) Scales are always difficult to mee, too. As I looked at the map I thought this area could be about 500m in length. As I read you plan the river sketched in to be some hundred metres wide I was bit surprised. I'd say the map could very well be 1-3km each direction and still look fitting. So there's good space for the town.
Concerning the river wide I guess it doesn't really need to be that wide (half mile). Guessing you're referring to the US miles half a mile would mean about 800m wide. That's a truly tremendous amount of water. Think how long it took humanity to be able to build a bridge across such a length. For comparison I measured some bridge lenghts using Google maps:
The Deutzer bridge across the Rhine in Cologne is about 350m long. The bridges across the Thames in London (Tower, Westminster and other famous ones) are about 250m wide. Bridges across the Seine in Paris and across the Tiber in Rome are 100-150m wide. At the widest point where the Ile de la Cite lies, the Seine is about 400m from bank to bank right across the island.