13 - District 13 [Kacey]

[snodsy]

Wow again!!!

[ranger]

Josiah, it's just an inner bevel on the border, with a texture, all from the layer styles menu. I drew up the design, and traced over it with the pen tool then stroked it, and filled it with a dusty rose type of colour, I actually find pinks, and purples make nice metals that way, I learned that from the limited colour palette challenge.

I'm actually planning on redoing the border in a more hand drawn style, but if you guy's think it will suit the rest of the map then I may keep it as it is.

I think the sketchy underneath the border actually compliments it as well, but hah that may just be me! its looking good.
are you shading each piece of the buildings as separate layers? I really like the shading. I was toying around with it yesterday on mine and mine ended up looking cartoony.

(lol after looking at your latest progress I can see your blowing up the buildings and hand painting them with extra cool detail... wow you are inspiring me to do more with my own.)

[Josiah VE]

Oh my! Goodness me!
That is really beautiful. Great job so far.

Josiah, it's just an inner bevel on the border, with a texture, all from the layer styles menu. I drew up the design, and traced over it with the pen tool then stroked it, and filled it with a dusty rose type of colour, I actually find pinks, and purples make nice metals that way, I learned that from the limited colour palette challenge.

I'm actually planning on redoing the border in a more hand drawn style, but if you guy's think it will suit the rest of the map then I may keep it as it is.

Yeah, I could guess that, but how did you make the shape for it?
I think the border is really nice now!

[Ilanthar]

Gorgeous!! I love the frame and its esoteric symbols. The layout and the side-view are so promising...
And this last improvement is top-notch! I'm pretty sure you could use somehow use your linework with a layer effect. It could add something more.

[kacey]

I am not trying to force anything on you. Do what works best for you, just wanted to know what to expect later on. I think images without lines require much more work and it is way more challanging. Way to go Kacey.

Voolf – No worries, I’m really depending on the guild for ideas, and suggestions because I’ve never done a city, or buildings before. You’re ideas, and suggestions are invaluable to me. I can’t tell you what to expect because I don’t even know yet where things will turn. I’m really just in an experimental faze right now, but some have suggested I keep the sketchy lines so I will for now. Maybe down the road, if I decide to keep them I’ll redo it so it looks a little nicer.

Oh my, that painting, this is going to be glorious to behold. I'd say try some covered, only because I know that professors like to be pampered.

Thanks Falconius, I’ll keep that in mind, tho some of them may want some fresh air after spending several hours indoors studying.

Oh my! That is just so beautiful - those domes are like dusky pearls

Mouse – I was thinking that myself tho it wasn’t intended, maybe I’ll try adding a touch of pink in those window highlights to get a more opalescent gleam, you know, for us girls.

Wow again!!!

Thanks Snodsy!

[kacey]

I think the sketchy underneath the border actually compliments it as well, but hah that may just be me! its looking good.
are you shading each piece of the buildings as separate layers? I really like the shading. I was toying around with it yesterday on mine and mine ended up looking cartoony.

(lol after looking at your latest progress I can see your blowing up the buildings and hand painting them with extra cool detail... wow you are inspiring me to do more with my own.)

Thanks Ranger, The only time I used separate layers for building sections was for the base shapes which you can see in the previous update, and I just zoom in close, and use small brushes. I made one dome with the circle selection tool, and filled it with a dark brown colour, then I set an inner bevel till it resembled a dome, and set a drop shadow. I used a light direction of 160° on the bevel, and shadow...because Mouse said so...

After that I set the blend mode to multiply, and turned the opacity of the layer down to 38. I then duplicated the layer, and re sized the dome to fit the others...Duplicate...re size...place, until all the base domes were in place.

I did the same thing for the rectangle, and square bases, same bevel, same shadow...But no bevel on the areas I want to appear flat.

Then I was left with allot of separate shape layers, and because of the multiply blend mode, and lowered opacity, you could see them darker where they overlapped...This was a problem.

I kept the domes above the rest in the layer stack, then the square towers, then the rectangle bases on the bottom of the stack....each shape on it’s own layer.

Then on the larger bases I masked out the areas where there was domes, and squares on top, and on the squares I masked out all the areas with domes on top.

After that I selected all the shape layers...Right click...then hit rasterize layer style. And then merged these layers together to get a base to work from with general light, and shadow information...you’ll see in my screen shot that I forgot to merge a few, but I meant to, so ignore that. The layers are getting a little unwieldy at this point, and hard to keep track of.

I then made a new layer right under the base shapes, and set it to overlay, I used a soft round brush to accentuate the shadows, and highlights, and make the pie sections stand out, and also to shape the windows. I did all the shading by hand for the entire building on this one layer, using black for shadows, and white for highlights, aside from another overlay layer just above the multiply shape layer for smaller things like reflections, in the windows, and more defined highlights which I use a hard round pressure to size brush for...Here’s what it looked like at this point...And I almost forgot, I used a separate layer to shade the windows... So really it's 3 shading layers, I'm even confusing myself



And here’s what the overlay shading layers look like without the multiply shape layer sandwiched in between.

[Chashio]

It is looking fabulous kacey! I really love that style you're going with - beautiful

[Mouse]

Wow! I must say that if I thought I didn't know very much about PS before, I certainly don't understand even what I thought I understood! (if that makes any sense).

I'm even more impressed than I was before

Go for it with the pearls, girl

I really hadn't realised I'd set any rules about lighting? I'm sorry if it came across that way. I was trying to help my fellow CC3 mappers by showing them the settings I was using for my own global sun direction to match up with John's light ray thing. Mind you - if its useful...

[kacey]

Oh my! Goodness me!
That is really beautiful. Great job so far.

Yeah, I could guess that, but how did you make the shape for it?
I think the border is really nice now!

Sorry Josiah, I guess I could have gone into more detail for you, but it was like 4am when I read you’re post, and sleep was necessary. If you give me a few days I’ll try, and write something up for you on how I created the shapes, but I can’t guaranty that you’ll be able to understand it after reading back my last post. I’ll have to go through my layers again, and see if I can make sense of it all.

Gorgeous!! I love the frame and its esoteric symbols. The layout and the side-view are so promising...
And this last improvement is top-notch! I'm pretty sure you could use somehow use your linework with a layer effect. It could add something more.

Thanks Ilanthar, I’ll try playing around with the layer effects, and see if I can come up with something.

It is looking fabulous kacey! I really love that style you're going with - beautiful

Thanks Chashio, I appreciate the kind words.

Wow! I must say that if I thought I didn't know very much about PS before, I certainly don't understand even what I thought I understood! (if that makes any sense).

I'm even more impressed than I was before

Go for it with the pearls, girl

I really hadn't realised I'd set any rules about lighting? I'm sorry if it came across that way. I was trying to help my fellow CC3 mappers by showing them the settings I was using for my own global sun direction to match up with John's light ray thing. Mind you - if its useful...

Mouse, sorry if I confused any one with that long explanation. You’re light settings were useful, thanks for that, do you think the shadows seem to be in the right direction?

[Mouse]

You didn't confuse me. What you said was all perfectly clear. You just revealed a few things that I'd never heard of before, which is quite different to being confusing

I think the shadows are perfect, but there is no real need to worry about shadows too much as long as they are all in the right general direction, because we all have our own styles, and each style has its own requirements for density, length and fade, and so on. You do them as you see fit to do them to suit your personal style

EDIT: Oops my bad - that came out all wrong, but I'll leave it 'as-is' so your comment makes sense, Kacey. What I meant to say was...

That's ok, you didn't confuse me that much The shadows are fine