December Entry: Old School

[The Cartographist]

Here's the first level of my cave complex. It, again, has taken much longer than expected. It would have been impossible to accomplish this without my WACOM tablet and without the use of objects that I had made in the past for another project (the rope bridges).

I'm now at 3hr 18min. Running out of time...

I think that I'm going to have to scale back from my original vision. There is no way to accomplish what I had originally planned.

[ravells]

I love the black pen feel to this. Especially the dots to texture the sand. Lovely contribution.

[The Cartographist]

As promised, a set of black-and-white, "old-school" DnD maps. This was a great challenge--as evidenced by the number of participants.

This is pretty much my final submission.

As I am at 3hr 57min, I don't think anything else will happen.

I have to say that this has been a humbling experience. As is my fashion, my original vision for this project was COMPLETELY unrealistic for the time constraints. There is so much more that I want to do just with the maps presented here--let alone the two or three more maps that I had originally planned.

To all of you who told me to try out the GIMP--thank you. This would have easily taken 10hrs+ if I was doing it with Paint alone. [I was literally clicking, drawing, and typing as fast as I could for the final 40 minutes as it was.] GIMP allowed me to accomplish what is here.

Maybe sometime in the coming weeks, I'll finish these maps to match my vision--then again, just as possibly not.

[The Cartographist]

Looking at the maps, without a key, I realize that they might not be as clear as I hoped. So:

Land is thick black line--the shore line if you will.

Each thin line inside land is a 40ft contour line--meaning that the Light is something higher than 120ft above the water.

The thin lines in the water (in Overview) are depth lines, corresponding to 0-5ft, 5-10ft, 10-15ft, and deeper. Likewise, the different shading levels (in the other three maps) correspond to those same depths: 0-5ft, 5-10ft, 10-15ft.

The "Upper Caves" are at the first contour line, i.e. at a height of 40ft above mean water level.

Finally: I'd love to hear your thoughts, critiques, etc. [I have a list of about 14 things that I would do to these maps if given more time--I'm curious to see if the guild comes up with the same suggestions or if you surprise me with things of which I hadn't thought.]

[RobA]

I repped everyone who entered this month, just for entering, except I couldn't rep you, so accept my public kudos for entering!

-Rob A>

[ravells]

Repped on Rob's behalf (and mine). I have to say I find the contour lines a little confusing, but I'll need a little more time to look at this carefully and give a more reasoned explanation.