Bustling Channel, Adept (Patreon)

I'm back again, this time with a new city map- the Bustling Channel (25x25)! I haven't made a regular city map for a little while, and since I've been prioritizing simpler maps recently I wanted to take a crack at a nice and simple city map. So, this time I whipped up another city canal map and kept it nice and simple, nothing crazy or too exciting- and that's just how we like it!

1. I felt like making another canal map, this time around. It's been a minute since the last one and I took a look back at the two I had made, City Boulevard and City Canal, and decided I wanted to take another crack at one that wasn't quite as rigid a layout as the Boulevard and not as jumbled as the Canal.  So, this time around I tried to cut the difference between the two, with a more interesting stretch of canal that isn't just a straight shot and a more compact layout of the buildings, which I feel comes across as more interesting. 

Side note, I left that open area in the market because I wasn't certain what I would place there. Any open area in a city is usually rapidly filled by a well or fountain, but after trying out one or two options I thought that the layout felt a little too cluttered in a way that felt kinda dumb, like no one would have ever put a fountain there. Anyway, filling out the space with more stalls felt natural and cluttered in good way.

2. I messed up. I accidentally used my old roof texture. I only noticed when I had placed all the roofs and was wondering if I had saved the windows separately somewhere, glanced through my files, and realized that I had neglected to grab my most recent roof tile texture. By this point I was utterly unwilling to arrange roofs again and was resigned to my fate. To make things right I cleaned it up a little bit, which is really all I could do without sinking so much time that I might as well just start over.

As always, I ripped the market stalls from a past map, the Parkside Market and the props came from the Desert Bazaar, and as I have said since the beginning: I see nothing wrong with reusing old props and if you do then I hope you'd stop to consider why. I see no reason to draw barrels, crates, and wagons for every city map as long as I'm not doing so in a way that draws attention to the repetition. I know no one is currently complaining, but it's been a while since I've expressed these thoughts and someone always eventually complains. 

3. Colors! I took yet another crack at city colors/lighting, starting from scratch and trying lots of different things out. This time I leaned a little bluish/greenish, keeping the contrast nice and high, and leaving the paper texture much more visible than usual. I think some might consider any/all of these choices obnoxious, but I think they're each pretty nice. 

Also, I feel like this one might be one of my most readable city maps, somehow? I'm not entirely sure why, but it doesn't feel over-complicated like many of them have, and in fact there's a sense of balance which I usually fail to achieve. I suspect it's mostly due to there being a nice feeling of clutter, but the colors are definitely an element of it as well.