13 - District 13 [Kacey]

[kacey]

Not at all Straf, I know I'm awful with spelling, and grammar... The texture is from coyotemax on deviant art, I mixed a few of them together to make this one, and haven't used anything else since.

And thanks Mouse.

[Josiah VE]

I know I'm awful with spelling, and grammar...

If that is actually true, then your cartography skills easily make up for it.
Very nice Kacey! I don't know what it's going to look like in the end, but I actually kind of like the sketchy style you have now. Looking forward to seeing it progress.
That border is beautiful! How did you make it?

[kacey]

If that is actually true, then your cartography skills easily make up for it.
Very nice Kacey! I don't know what it's going to look like in the end, but I actually kind of like the sketchy style you have now. Looking forward to seeing it progress.
That border is beautiful! How did you make it?

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.

[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.)

[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.

[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!