Mapping a Border-Castle [WIP]

[SteffenBrand]

Hey guys!

Since this is some non-paid work I do for fun and as a tribute to one of my favourite Pen-&.Paper-RPGs 'The Dark Eye' ('Das Schwarze Auge' in Germany), I guess I can do this one as a WIP to show you guys how I do this. The first step - making my mind and inner eye about the basics of this kind of castle I want to create I can hardly show anyhow, but usually I do some research and try to wrap my head around what makes sense to build and how it should be done in order to maintain the structural integrity of the building probably even in an attack.

This building should have:
- Upper floor, first floor, basement
- The big tower to defend in the worst case
- Two entrances (it is on a border, so naturally it should be able to handle some traffic)
- Guest rooms, stables, armory, smith, a little church, etc.

This is for an adventure, so lets get some dramatic. Also it is meant to be forgotten for about 15 years, parts of it are destroyed or broken down. An evil necromancer uses the basement as his lair. I'll put this in there, too.

This is what I've got so far.

I usually start with basic black forms as a basis and interesting forms. Also, this is very easy to do, you can arrange this very easy instead of drawing outlines at this point and messing up the distances in between the walls. This is the way I start out with this type of maps. The other stories will follow and kind of depends on the basis.

Technical stuff:
- I work in Photoshop CS6, Wacom Intuos 4 (the big one), MacBook Pro
- Everything in here will be hand made digitally, so no textures. I'll go for line-art.

Hope you like it. I'll continue as I go along.
Feel free to ask questions, comment and tell me stuff. =)

Steffen