WIP - New-Stetven, capital city of Brevoy

[Narolas]

Hello there !
After making my own map of the Brevoy area, a custom town in Rostland named Fière-Muraille, it's time to map the capital city of Brevoy, "New-Stetven" !
Like my map of brevoy, new-stetven is an actual location in Paizo's campaign setting for Pathfinder, but only vaguely described, which gives me a ton of room to play with in my homebrew campaign.

I had already made simple hand-drawn sketches a while back, but I wasn't really happy with the way the city is portrayed in those, so I went back and updated them.
I now have a rough idea of what I want, and I've already worked on this for a few days., here goes for the first progress updates :

WIP_0.jpg

So I took the area of my Brevoy map where New-Stetven would be and zoomed-in on it to use as a reference.

WIP_1a.jpg

First rough idea of what-goes-where in the metropolis as well as a start on terrain lines/colours, pictured here are :
- main travel roads/hubs
- areas of wealth (orange = nobility, dark green = rich, green = common, pink = poor)
- circles of wealth (in red) to give myself an idea of a gradual transition from rich to poor areas.
- A size comparison with Fière-Muraille, a large city in Rostland.
- A rough scale

WIP_1b.jpg

Same version, different layers :
- Elevation map to give an idea of how the terrain looks, more specifically the two hills the city is built on (the old stetven hill north, the high and steep hill to the south where the royal palace is),
as well as the coast and the area where the bridge would be.

WIP_2.jpg

First real update, grass and water colours are pretty much done (i'm sure there'll be lots of tweaking over time), cliffs are done as well, haven't touched the woods.

WIP_3.jpg

And a better plan for how the city will look, with a more detailed road network and city areas (same colours as before, with yellow = economic/touristic (ie. crowded and lots of shops), blue = docks/fishing/etc..)


There !
Feedback is welcomed as always, next up : shading on cliffs, woods, road network.

[ChickPea]

Off to a great start! I really enjoyed watching you put your last map together, so keen to see this one develop too.

[Narolas]

Thanks ChickPea!

Here's the latest progress :

WIP_4.jpg

Roads, shading on cliffs, tweaking of colours and the forest.
I still consider the forest to be WIP, i don't know, it doesn't feel quite right, but maybe that's just me ... thoughts on that ?

[Ilanthar]

Well, that's gonna be another good WIP to watch. Your forests looks already nice, though I would mix a bit more lights&shadows. I mean, there's no particular reason for a forest to be lighter on the edges and darker inside (on a top view). Density and tree-size is generally quite chaotic (except man-organized ones), depending on ground variations and the competition between plants.
Another question : what is the purpose of the (texture?) effect close to the forest that looks more digital?

[Warlin]

I love the color and the variations according with the elevation. I always find it difficult to give the impression of relief from above. Nice work!

[Narolas]

Yea, looking at the forest now gives me some better ideas.
The texture was a quick try to simulate bushes or low density vegetation, i'll change that because it looks fake atm.
Ilanthar you're absolutely right, that's probably what was bothering me, I'll have multiple "levels" of light/dark shading to suggest clusters of higher/lower trees and elevation change. I'll also add some clearings/holes in the forest, make it look less like a single mass of trees. Lots of good ideas of improvement!

Thanks for the feedback

[Narolas]

Tried a different style for the forest, i'm wondering if it's fitting with the rest of the map.
Thoughts ?

WIP_5.jpg

Also some slight colour and road tweaks.

[J.Edward]

I like it Narolas. I think it looks good. Only critique would be that I feel like the edges of the woods should be a bit more rounded, less angular.
Color looks good. Shading is nice too.

[- Max -]

Looks pretty good so far indeed. Nice forest shading, I like it. My only critic atm would be on the bevel (or inner shadow) effect on the roads. This digital effect clashes with the hand-drawn map in my opinion.

[Narolas]

Not much of an update, but i'm trying to get those things right first, so :

WIP_6.jpg

Tweaked colours and shading a bit on forest, remade some lines to remove the more angular/jaggy lines.
Tried different things with roads, my problem being that I want it to pop out a bit and be readable easily (it is a map after all), but as Max pointed out the "digital effect" look clashes with the hand-drawn one.
This version has a smaller stroke with slightly feathered borders, instead of a bevel effect I tried a really subtle inner-shadow effect. I've also tweaked the mask on roads (I added it last version to make the roads slightly darker/brighter depending on elevation).
I'm also thinking once elements are added to the map and a large portion of it is filled with buildings/blocks/etc the roads will clash a lot less.


Thanks a ton guys, this is why working while updating a thread on this forum is great, really quick feedback from some of the best cartographers
I'm slowly developing a kinda style and method, i'm excited to work on another region map next and try better things (my Brevoy region map kinda sucks when I look at it now!), or maybe try a really low-scale map, like a building, a manor, a street, we'll see.