Any Town Icon Tips?

[Josiah VE]

Hi everyone! I'm planning to do some city icons for my commission map I'm working on (Eastmott) but I'm not too great at them because I have not done them too much before.

The sort of icon is something like you might find on one of Max's maps, a sort of miniture stylized version of a city:

From one of Max's maps (NOT MINE):



I was wondering if anyone would like to walk me through their process for making icons like these, just to shed a bit of light on it. If not I'll just have to soldier through. Thanks!

[Abu Lafia]

Hey Josiah, i cannot guide you myself through this process, but i think this great mini-tutorial by Djekspek might help you out. Torstan did a similar iso city icon tutorial too i think... give me a second...
EDIT: Ok.. got it!
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...=16819&page=12
It's post 117 (oO) a bit down the page... Hope it helps.

[ThomasR]

What Martin said and here's a source for grid and doted paper plus a little help on perspective :

https://incompetech.com/graphpaper/
http://blog.trilemma.com/2016/09/iso...al-videos.html
http://blog.trilemma.com/2016/11/sho...nt-people.html

[Josiah VE]

Hey Josiah, i cannot guide you myself through this process, but i think this great mini-tutorial by Djekspek might help you out. Torstan did a similar iso city icon tutorial too i think... give me a second...
EDIT: Ok.. got it!
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...=16819&page=12
It's post 117 (oO) a bit down the page... Hope it helps.

Thanks Abu! I have seen those, and they are definitely helpful. But I still can't quite get it. It's a little frustrating! I see it, I know what I have to do... but it's just so hard! I really suck with perspective stuff. I think I just need more practice.

What Martin said and here's a source for grid and doted paper plus a little help on perspective :

https://incompetech.com/graphpaper/
http://blog.trilemma.com/2016/09/iso...al-videos.html
http://blog.trilemma.com/2016/11/sho...nt-people.html

Thanks for those resources Thomrey. I'll have to take a look at them.

[ThomasR]

Use a picture, trace the main lines un red on a layer, drop the opacity to 30%, work your magic on the top layer

[DanielHasenbos]

Hey Joshiah,

In Djekspek's mini-tutorial he also mentions something about checking the silhouette. I find that city icons look best when the general silhouette is roughly the shape of an isometrically drawn house. I don't know if there is any 'science' concerning this subject, but it's just something I noticed.

These are some icons I have drawn. The red lines show what I mean with the silhouette.

Example.jpg

Perhaps that might be helpful.

-Dan

[Voolf]

This is very informative thread, i would love to learn too how to make nice and proper icons. DanielHasenbos, unfortunately i dont get that silouette. What that suppose to mean? This ? If yes how is that related to those nice iso buildings, i dont get anything from that red outlie :/

[DanielHasenbos]

I meant the outline of the icons when I said silhouette. All the icons have a similar outline as shown with the red shapes. Slightly odd choice of words perhaps. Djekspek used that word in the tutorial I was referring to so I figured I'd do so too, to avoid confusion (and I failed! D: haha)

-Dan

[Voolf]

Hmm, still... what about the outline? The thickness? or you mean shape of whole image always forms triangle?

This is what i could do paint in quickly. I seem to fail choosing right brush for that. Are you using default hard brush ? Also how are you people draw straight lines with tablet i never know. Especially diagonal lines are my weakness, i always make a curve.

icon_resize.jpeg

[ThomasR]

The roof of your front building (the part at the back) is missing, to avoid these problems, use a doted background for iso drawing. A link is provided in a previous comment.