Williamtown. Early 1800's style port map

[sirjoe]

A little port town map for all those pirate-lovers out there. Arrg!
Produced with CC3 / CD2 and photoshop. Feedback welcome.

William Town 2.jpg

[HellHound]

LOVE the look and feel of this one. Really managed to hide the CC origins with the excellent work in photoshop.

Is that a scanned background or a purely digital one?

(Ditto for the wax seal)

[Richardb]

Nice antique effects. It makes the basic city symbols look much better. Very visually pleasing!

[thebax2k]

Nice job, you did very well giving it a pseudo-old look. Consider it yoinked. It even compares favorably to Shawn Brown's professional map of Port Royal, Jamaica (pre earthquake) at http://shawnbrown.com/maps/port_royal.html which has been my standard map for a pirate den (besides Freeport) up until now. Welcome to the Guild sirjoe and keep up the good mapping.

[ravells]

Absolutely gorgeous! You can almost feel the texture!

[pyrandon]

Wow--great first post! I agree with the others here that you have captured well the feel of a map of this genre! Well done!

As for feedback I had to think hard, but here are a few (purely cosmetic, "icing on the cake"-level) ideas:
1) Although stereotypical, I would ragged-up the edges. Would increase the feel even more.
2) The wax seal has a red glow around it--a black shadow would make it "pop" even more + be more realistic.
3) When you look very closely, the crease in the paper (which I absolutely love, by the way) does not bleed through to also crease the drawing itself. This is pretty easy to fix in PS.

Again, awesome map. Welcome to the Guild!!!

[RPMiller]

I'll parrot what pyrandon said. Welcome aboard!

We are actually planning on a pirate game next month using the Savage Worlds rules. I'll have to point the GM over here to see it in case he would like a map.

Oh, and you have been repped!

[RPMiller]

Just had a thought (Gameprinter are you reading this). If he could do embossing he could actually print this map in color and then emboss the seal fold it up and have a really nice handout for players.

[sirjoe]

Wow--great first post! I agree with the others here that you have captured well the feel of a map of this genre! Well done!

As for feedback I had to think hard, but here are a few (purely cosmetic, "icing on the cake"-level) ideas:
1) Although stereotypical, I would ragged-up the edges. Would increase the feel even more.
2) The wax seal has a red glow around it--a black shadow would make it "pop" even more + be more realistic.
3) When you look very closely, the crease in the paper (which I absolutely love, by the way) does not bleed through to also crease the drawing itself. This is pretty easy to fix in PS.

Again, awesome map. Welcome to the Guild!!!

Thanks for your kind feedback. It's always good to get constructive critism like this and I really value it. You mention the crease in the paper... how would you bring that up through the other drawing layers in PS? I tried to get that by placing it on a separate layer, but it just ended up looking fake. (I need to drastically improve my PS skills.)

Cheers,
JS

[pyrandon]

(I need to drastically improve my PS skills.)

Take a number & get in line. Me too!!

... You mention the crease in the paper... how would you bring that up through the other drawing layers in PS? I tried to get that by placing it on a separate layer, but it just ended up looking fake.

There are a few ways you can do it. First I need to know how you inserted it: It is a separate element from both the paper & the map, or is it a part of the paper layer?

First, you can make sure the blending mode of the actual city drawing layer is set to "multiply". Also/instead, (if you layers stack up right) for even more "pop" you can use a displacement filter. (Butch Curry does a fine job of explaining this on his "Fantasy Cartography Podcast #10" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDtNQpxj3Iw). )

There are other techniques, too (like Apply Image & channels), but rarely do you need to for just a crease.

I hope this helps at least a bit!