City of Abberdin and and its surroundings

[vb.maps]

Hello, guild!

I keep learning coloring and shading (and i do it very slow) and diced to color my map which i posted couple weeks back.

I think it turned better what my previous attempt with this map - https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=44505



Mistakes i made:
City looks like big grey blob. Better to do more narrow streets and squares. It will solve 2 problems at once - city will look more crowded and not like grey blob
I need to work on labeling and fonts next time i think, because they are not very fitting whole style.
Forest coloring is bad i just have to learn how to do it

Thank to all gods i don't suffer from severe case of perfectionism and can stop fixing mistakes on one map and finish it and use new knowledge on next one.

Corrected version:

[Kisachik the Wanderer]

Hi vb. Your coloring looks pretty good. Yes, the city streets could use a bit more texture, but those forests look pretty good. You didn't go overboard with colour saturation, which is popular with some map makers around here. I like hand drawn and coloured, and I know how much time and work it takes. I think your clouds have a fun style to them. It's cool that you tried to show a storm at sea here, not an easy task, so I bet it took some experimenting with creative ideas. I'd like to see you colour the lightning white though, I think it would make the storm look properly dramatic.

If you want to improve the texture of the city, vary the brightness here and there; adding some shadows would make it look less flat. If the grass surrounding the city was darker it would no longer look so muddy as well, because not just colours but also values are relative. The city isn't really as dark as it looks, but the grass is so pale it creates this illusion.

One thing I find kind of creepy is that tree with hanging children. Must have some pretty gruesome story behind it. At the same time, I like to find unusual detail on maps, this is definitely unusual.

[vb.maps]

Hello, Kisachik!

Hi vb. Your coloring looks pretty good. Yes, the city streets could use a bit more texture, but those forests look pretty good. You didn't go overboard with colour saturation, which is popular with some map makers around here. I like hand drawn and coloured, and I know how much time and work it takes.

Yeah, it's hard to keep balance with saturation i really appreciate your words!

It's cool that you tried to show a storm at sea here, not an easy task, so I bet it took some experimenting with creative ideas. I'd like to see you colour the lightning white though, I think it would make the storm look properly dramatic.

I knew a forgot something! Will fix lightning. And i totally agree what it gonna look better with white color

If you want to improve the texture of the city, vary the brightness here and there; adding some shadows would make it look less flat. If the grass surrounding the city was darker it would no longer look so muddy as well, because not just colours but also values are relative. The city isn't really as dark as it looks, but the grass is so pale it creates this illusion.

It is great advice right here. Gonna try and fix it

One thing I find kind of creepy is that tree with hanging children. Must have some pretty gruesome story behind it. At the same time, I like to find unusual detail on maps, this is definitely unusual

Oh, i can see why you thought it children hanging there, but it's just some bandits!

Thank you for your thoughtful advice!

[DrWho42]

abberdin looks idyllic! i especially like al'ithar academy

[Kellerica]

Looks really nice! I enjoy your style a lot, and I enjoy the details here - love those storm clouds, and that academy immediately sparks the interest and makes one wonder what kind of stories that place might hide.

As for the city coloring, for my two cents, I would've just used a different color (maybe lighter rather than darker) for the city's streets, than the area surrounding them. You've already done a good job of making that area visible in the lineart, but it could use a little something to make it pop out a little better. I hope you don't mind, I whipped up a super-quick experiment to better illustrate what I mean. Something like this could maybe help to make the city look a bit more lively?

[vb.maps]

abberdin looks idyllic! i especially like al'ithar academy

Thank you!

Looks really nice! I enjoy your style a lot, and I enjoy the details here - love those storm clouds, and that academy immediately sparks the interest and makes one wonder what kind of stories that place might hide.

As for the city coloring, for my two cents, I would've just used a different color (maybe lighter rather than darker) for the city's streets, than the area surrounding them. You've already done a good job of making that area visible in the lineart, but it could use a little something to make it pop out a little better. I hope you don't mind, I whipped up a super-quick experiment to better illustrate what I mean. Something like this could maybe help to make the city look a bit more lively?

Thank you for kind words

Your quick example already looks much better It seems so obvious to do street with lighter color but sometimes it hard to see simple thing before it shown to you by knowledgeable professional! Thank you Kellerica! Yours and Kisachik's advices helped me so much!

[arsheesh]

Great looking piece VB, I particularly like the academy, that's pretty cool stuff. I think Kellerica's right on target about lightening the hue of the city roads. Regarding the forests, I think the issue is that there is no clear lighting source. Usually darker areas indicate shadow but in this map these areas appear almost at random and so it's difficult to discern the direction the light is coming from. However elsewhere (e.g. the shadow on that giant tree up north) you do indicate directional lighting. So I think you just need to be consistent about shading the areas that are in shadow, not the ones that aren't.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[vb.maps]

Great looking piece VB, I particularly like the academy, that's pretty cool stuff. I think Kellerica's right on target about lightening the hue of the city roads. Regarding the forests, I think the issue is that there is no clear lighting source. Usually darker areas indicate shadow but in this map these areas appear almost at random and so it's difficult to discern the direction the light is coming from. However elsewhere (e.g. the shadow on that giant tree up north) you do indicate directional lighting. So I think you just need to be consistent about shading the areas that are in shadow, not the ones that aren't.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

Thanks! Great advice about forests i will use it in a next time, thank you very much!

Also i have corrected streets and grasslands surrounding the city and i think it's look a little bit better! And i added white lightnings to a storm cloud, as Kisachik suggested and looks great for my taste!

For me it's hard to do changes to a finished map, but i learned a lot all thanks to great advices

[ThomasR]

Really nice one, Vadim ! I especially like the sense of scale.

[vb.maps]

Thank you!