(WIP) Arch City of Nessa'Mor

[Mouse]

Granted that things happen differently in a fantasy setting, but don't underestimate a reader's ability to fill in the unexplained bits with explanations of their own. For example my imagination automatically provided me with a personal view on what might be happening to that water by instantly suggesting that the planet is hollow and contains a smaller, inner planet with an ocean of its own. Also that if the water is going down to that level there has to be some natural mechanism by which it returns to the surface, or after a couple of thousand years there wouldn't be any water left on the surface at all. So my mind then suggested to me that this could somehow be through some sort of geyser-like eruptions happening elsewhere on the outer surface of your world, and probably powered by volcanic heat like the real world equivalent.

Don't worry about it too much. If all else fails - its something to do with magic

[XCali]

Granted that things happen differently in a fantasy setting, but don't underestimate a reader's ability to fill in the unexplained bits with explanations of their own. For example my imagination automatically provided me with a personal view on what might be happening to that water by instantly suggesting that the planet is hollow and contains a smaller, inner planet with an ocean of its own. Also that if the water is going down to that level there has to be some natural mechanism by which it returns to the surface, or after a couple of thousand years there wouldn't be any water left on the surface at all. So my mind then suggested to me that this could somehow be through some sort of geyser-like eruptions happening elsewhere on the outer surface of your world, and probably powered by volcanic heat like the real world equivalent.

Don't worry about it too much. If all else fails - its something to do with magic

Your imagination is facinating. Hehe, you never fail to surpise me.

Anyway, aside from that. I only imagined a waterfal falling into a hole, creating a small underground lake. The inner city has access to this lake. There is a small stream that goes from the underground lake and disappears beneath the rock to the right, not to be seen again (make with that information what you will). There is no hollow planet in sight. Though, there are big caverns and a maze of tunnels.

***
So here is a few changes. I started to blend the road a bit. Change the name of the waterfall to make it more clear. Changed the drop into the hole. Added a rock plate there to assert the possibility that sea water does not flow freely into the caverns. Then, I added prelimenary names to the Fort/Inn and the Jagged rock.

Also the thing with the 'wells'. If you zoom in once, then in the small courtyards between the buildings I added wells, like in, where you draw water. But I don't know if the ones I used fits.

[Mouse]

Oh! I thought I had quite an ordinary imagination! Thanks

The roads and the waterfall look much better now (even though I'm still thinking about hollow planets). The whole map looks to be just about finished with the added names

I'm just not going to think about how deep those wells are. I think the fresh water in them will just have to be down to magic

[XCali]

Hi everyone, hope it has been a good day!

Okay, so just before I state the obvious, that there is a border now, I need to emphasize clearly the fact that before today, I had NEVER done a border before. And apart from making a bigger canvas and adding a paper texture, I had no experience in it, NADA. In fact, I knew I needed a border for this map and I've been super stressed how I will ever do one. I'm good with random art, but symmetrical stuff makes me sweat.

And then I got inspiration today, and incredibly surprising... I actually have a border now.

Okay, I KNOW there is a woncky bit at the bottom of the map, so ignore that bit for now.(unless you know how to fix it.) Let me know what you think of the actual border.

Also, I added roads between the houses as an experiment. And there is probably a lot of small changes too.

OH! I removed the 'wells' for Mouse's sake.

[Mouse]

That's a terrific border, XCali - I really like it

Like you say the corners need a bit of tidying - perhaps a final stamp of a square version of the pattern on each corner? Not sure...

Do you mean the white line at the bottom of the picture? Maybe carefully paint a bit more sea and rock till it meets the border? I can see that you can't really squash the border up a bit, or the pattern would be wrong.

EDIT: And thanks for the wells! I admit that I was having a bit of a problem resolving them in my imagination! LOL!

[XCali]

That's a terrific border, XCali - I really like it

Like you say the corners need a bit of tidying - perhaps a final stamp of a square version of the pattern on each corner? Not sure...

Do you mean the white line at the bottom of the picture? Maybe carefully paint a bit more sea and rock till it meets the border? I can see that you can't really squash the border up a bit, or the pattern would be wrong.

EDIT: And thanks for the wells! I admit that I was having a bit of a problem resolving them in my imagination! LOL!

Thanks Mouse!

Yeah, I'm not too sure how to tackle the corners either. Even getting this far with the border has been a huge accomplishment for me.

And to talk about the lines at the bottom, I'm not sure how that happened at all. But I'll see what I can do.

I do want to know if the color of the border is right for this specific map.

[Mouse]

About the corners...

Are you familiar with how to make yourself a new brush in GIMP?

I need to know that before I go rattling on quite a way with an idea that only might be of some use to you

EDIT: How did you make the border originally? Was that a brush, or did you just draw one section and then paste it all around the map by hand?

[XCali]

About the corners...

Are you familiar with how to make yourself a new brush in GIMP?

I need to know that before I go rattling on quite a way with an idea that only might be of some use to you

EDIT: How did you make the border originally? Was that a brush, or did you just draw one section and then paste it all around the map by hand?

Oh, I know how to make a brush alright, hehehe . This map would have taken a lot longer without it. So rattle away.

(How I created the border is a little different though. I took a picture of a tile in my bathroom, cut out all the unnecessary bits and colorized it. Then figured out how big the border would look nice and calculated the size it need to be, then I shrunk the result of the pic to half the size of the border, copied and flipped it and aligned it. And got the top bit finished.
The bottom and side is basically flipped and rotated from the top, on different layers. And a bit of eraser to ease out the hard edges at the inner corner. I don't know if that makes sense, but that is the gist of the process.)

OH! And I figured out the line problem. The map is just a line smaller than the border and so when I exported to jpeg, the image is flatten and a white background spills through.

I'll add the fixed product next post.

The corners are the next conundrum.

[XCali]

Okay, so this is just a small fix, brushed out the ocean layer that slipped somewhere waaaaaaay back. And added a new layer behind the whole map and border to make sure no transparency turns to white. (I still need some tweaking on the ocean bit.)

With this, I tried a darker border and a BEVEL between the map and the border.
I am still pondering what color the border needs to be to fit.

Don't forget about the smaller roads between the buildings! That is also experimental build.



Darker border,

[Mouse]

Phew! That makes my suggestion a lot easier

The idea was to create a new perfectly square and perfectly symmetrical brush (identical no matter which side you have at the top) using bits and pieces of the border, or even just a simple pattern of circles or a blank bevelled square. Then all you would have to do is use the colour picker to pick the colours from the existing border, and dab it once in each of the four corners.

A lot of mappers use all kinds of corner designs - some elaborate and involving miniature scenes in little circular or quarter circle cameos and such like, but I don't think you really need to go that far unless you have a fancy to do it like that. Simple is just as good and effective

For future reference you might also want to make a brush out of that frame design to go with it.

Well that was my idea. Maybe you have an even better one of your own

EDIT: You just ninjad me! LOL! I like the lighter one because the darker one merges too much with the sea. You might find a subtle line of a very much darker blue around the inside edge of the frame will help to separate it just a bit more - whichever one you decide to use.

I think the roads tie the houses together a bit better - define the city.