Aug / Sept '17 Lite Challenge: Mackabie-on-the-Sea

[Bioluminescence]

Hello! My first entry ever here.

This is Mackabie-on-the-Sea, a quiet little village that primarily fishes, but does a bit of smallholding. Mostly, the little monastery on the hill is the primary feature - a place devoted to the care of cats. Dozens of moggies live on the island (and thus, not much else due to their predations) and many of them accompany the fishing boats out on their trips.

I was inspired by images of various Croatian villages, thus I named it for the Croatian word for cat: mačka. I have no idea how that's pronounced.

### Latest WIP ###
islandvillage-3d-wip01.jpg

My process images:
islandvillage-2d-scribble.jpg
This was my first scribble, trying to get a rough topography and layout. If I were sensible, I would have continued with this. Instead, for some mad reason (I blame /r/papertowns) I decided to go a bit 3d with it.

island-height01.png
My handmade heightmap. When I imported this to Unreal (UE4) it was all kinds of noisy and bumpy. I'd never really made a heightmap before, and I'm not some fancy person with WorldMachine or anything. Alas.
Still - this got me close enough to work with. My river was all kinds of wrong though.

islandvillage-3d-ref.jpg
This is what I threw down in Unreal to get a rough layout. Had to fix the river, flatten out areas for my box houses and the monastary, add a bridge placeholder, etc. Also smooth out the whole thing, as I mentioned.
I ran around it in first person to see how the scale was, but I think it's a bit big for that really.

And that's it so far!

I'm having real trouble with the trees and foliage. As you can maybe see in the original scribble, I wanted to have some small, terrace-style, fields on some of the slopes, but I'm at a bit of a loss how to start on them. I imagine I'll just... start, hate it, and keep going until I don't hate it. This is my first attempt at a stylized copse, and I kind of hate/love it. It's very complicated.

[Meshon]

I really really like that little forest. I'm always on the lookout for new ways to draw trees, I might have to steaaa… I mean borrow this!

[Bogie]

Really nice entry Bioluminescence, Welcome to the Challenge!

[Bioluminescence]

Got a lot of shading to do, and I've not really done this sort of thing before. I think I need to desaturate the hell out of the trees so that the rooftops pop properly - I really want them to be the first read.
Does anyone have any suggestions for how to represent the sea and/or the water from the river? I'm (literally? heh) drawing a blank right now, so I'm open to any ideas

### Latest WIP ###
islandvillage-3d-wip02.jpg

[Chashio]

Beautiful little map, Bioluminescence. I love the style you have going. It has a very charming feel to it.

[Bioluminescence]

Thanks, Chashio - I really appreciate that! Especially with how pretty your Alford Lake map trees are

[Bioluminescence]

That's all I managed to do in the weekend. I know the deadline is this week, so I'll have to see how much I get done before then, or if this is a pseudo-submission
I like the simple border, but I'm not convinced about the callout lines to the features. I want _something_ there, but I don't know what yet.

### Winner ###

islandvillage-3d-wip-04.jpg

[Samstego]

Ooooh the water added a ton to this. Very gorgeous.

[Bryan G. McWhirter]

This reminds me of a wine label.

[Bogie]

I agree, the water color really brings out the map.

I like that wine label Idea Bryan!