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Thread: Need some advice

  1. #1
    Guild Journeyer wthrasherb's Avatar
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    Question Need some advice

    Hello!

    I'm working on a fantasy novel and there is this unrealistically MASSIVE wall (1750 ft wide at the base, 3000 ft. tall, and 1000 ft wide at the top, 26 miles long) built in a mountain pass.

    This Wall is connected to a fairly large city, but over the years the city became over populated and people started using the wall for housing. There are all manner of tunnels and rooms inside the wall, but people have built an entire city on the wall alone. The population of the city proper is around 75,000 people and the wall, counting both sides and the extra 1000 ft of cliff below the wall, the wall population is easily over 100,000 people (spread out over 26 miles).

    I'm here at the Guild to gets some ideas on drawing portions of said wall. I'm not a complete noob to basic art and I'm fairly proficient with Photoshop.

    I'm guessing some isometric style would work best, but I've never drawn anything like that before.

    Where do I start? I don't need a "map" that is for show. I mean, that'd be cool, but I'm more concerned with writing at the moment. I just want a working visual representation to help me visualize.

    Suggestions?

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    Guild Adept Turambar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wthrasherb View Post
    Hello!

    I'm working on a fantasy novel and there is this unrealistically MASSIVE wall (1750 ft wide at the base, 3000 ft. tall, and 1000 ft wide at the top, 26 miles long) built in a mountain pass.

    This Wall is connected to a fairly large city, but over the years the city became over populated and people started using the wall for housing. There are all manner of tunnels and rooms inside the wall, but people have built an entire city on the wall alone. The population of the city proper is around 75,000 people and the wall, counting both sides and the extra 1000 ft of cliff below the wall, the wall population is easily over 100,000 people (spread out over 26 miles).

    I'm here at the Guild to gets some ideas on drawing portions of said wall. I'm not a complete noob to basic art and I'm fairly proficient with Photoshop.

    I'm guessing some isometric style would work best, but I've never drawn anything like that before.

    Where do I start? I don't need a "map" that is for show. I mean, that'd be cool, but I'm more concerned with writing at the moment. I just want a working visual representation to help me visualize.

    Suggestions?
    That's is an interesting concept, but also quite difficult to map in a way that captures the entire Wall-city and still has a decent level of detail. Despite being a very wide wall, it's width is tiny compared to its length.

    My approach, at first glance would probably be the following: I would do a very low-detail map of the entire wall with major areas marked, as an inset map. And then show 1-3 important areas close up in isometric perspective to capture the depth of the city and the tunnels in the walls. I would keep this to a scale where the length pf the cross-section isn't more than 2-3x the width (1000 ft). You could show this as a cross section to capture some of the interior parts of the wall as well. If you choose isometric, you can grab some reference grids to help as you sketch in photoshop. There are a bunch of free isometric grids and other perspective grids on DeviantArt.

  3. #3
    Guild Journeyer wthrasherb's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Turambar View Post
    That's is an interesting concept, but also quite difficult to map in a way that captures the entire Wall-city and still has a decent level of detail. Despite being a very wide wall, it's width is tiny compared to its length.

    My approach, at first glance would probably be the following: I would do a very low-detail map of the entire wall with major areas marked, as an inset map. And then show 1-3 important areas close up in isometric perspective to capture the depth of the city and the tunnels in the walls. I would keep this to a scale where the length pf the cross-section isn't more than 2-3x the width (1000 ft). You could show this as a cross section to capture some of the interior parts of the wall as well. If you choose isometric, you can grab some reference grids to help as you sketch in photoshop. There are a bunch of free isometric grids and other perspective grids on DeviantArt.
    I agree. Difficult to map. My middle name is "Difficult."

    As for it's dimensions, the width and height were numbers out of my ass, loosely based on the dimensions of the Great Wall of China and the big ass ice wall in Game of Thrones. I'm open to suggestions about dimensions. The 26 miles is pretty much set. It is a mountain pass and the wall is magically fused into the mountains at either end. The other dimensions are open to discussion. I want to keep it around 3000 feet high. Why? Because I can.

    Concerning mapping it, I want to do an isometric cross section, but only for "important" locations and such. I'm not going to even attempt to map this whole thing. Since this isn't for a game or whatever, I'm not even concerned with the map being to scale. It can just be a representation that captures the main concept.

    I don't have any isometric grids. I was going to search for some, but if you have something that will work with photoshop, please send it my way. I wish you could do an actual isometric grid in Photoshop that would allow snapping. I imagine what is on Deviant art is probably just a grid image you could use as a guideline. I'm going to pop over there and check now.

    Thanks for responding!

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    Guild Journeyer wthrasherb's Avatar
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    Also the wall was built with magic by "the gods" so unrealistic dimensions don't REALLY matter that much. But I would like to at least look like I put some thought into it as an author.

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    Guild Adept Turambar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wthrasherb View Post
    I don't have any isometric grids. I was going to search for some, but if you have something that will work with photoshop, please send it my way. I wish you could do an actual isometric grid in Photoshop that would allow snapping. I imagine what is on Deviant art is probably just a grid image you could use as a guideline. I'm going to pop over there and check now.

    Thanks for responding!
    You can check my favorites here, it has links to several: https://www.deviantart.com/turambar91/favourites

  6. #6

    Default kX5N3K

    Had similar issue, but I needed map of three different continents. Used Inkarnate for it, actually helped. If you didn't solve your problem yet, you can try it too.

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