Maffaton City

[Sanderling]

I'd been noticing the Aetherology and Xenobiology Departments.

Gorgeous map indeed, and I especially like the texture of the water and its interaction with the shorelines--lovely, muted colors and yet wonderfully distinct. How did you achieve that look?

[Stelknecht]

Thanks so much! Not a high fantasy per se, but with minimal gnome artificing, and minimal steampunk influence (although there is some). Never enough danky inns!
And after reading your keys (Bwahaha!) Spit artists!? I'm going to conform my city to better match your key. Clankhorses, brilliant. Much fun will hopefully be had.

[Daelin]

How did you achieve that look?

The water was made with 2 layers; first a blue base layer set to low opacity over the parchment layer, then a second layer with the grungy horizontal lines on top of that, also with low opacity. The lines around the shores were made by selecting the blue base layer and contracting that selection and stroking it, doing that several times over, again with progressively lower opacity. Now that's the basic techniques. The exact opacity values, the exact color code and how to achieve the grungy effect on the water lines, now that is done by endless tweaking. Exactly how long that takes depends on how much of a perfectionist you are and also maybe your level of OCD.

Spit artists!?

I guess you haven't read China Mieville? Perhaps my favorite author. His Bas-Lag universe is total brain candy to me. Spit-art is an actual thing in those books. Art made by a race of beings that look entirely human, except their heads are something close to a scarab beetle. As in this:

He also has giant moth monsters that feed on sentient thought, a giant interdimensional spider that speaks in freeform poetry, cactus people, steampunk cyborg war rhinos, a pirate city made of thousands of connected ships floating on the seas. The. list. goes. on.