Prepared! In Its Horrid Wake

[Meshon]

I'm not sure why I haven't posted a WIP for my other recent maps, but I'll give it a try this time around. This is for the seventh of eight maps I'm doing for a friend who is writing encounters for the Kobold Press blog. You can find all of his stuff here, and the most recent ones include the maps that I've been doing.

The brief I have so far is that there's an isolated temple and an avatar of the gnoll's god has recently passed by, leaving destruction and transforming hyenas in its wake. The temple is surrounded by a cemetery. My first thought was that you generally don't have hyenas in a medieval European setting, so I'd need to do something a little different. Here's the rough sketch that I did to get me started.



More to come soon, I hope!

cheers,
Meshon

[Abu Lafia]

Cool to see a wip of a map of yours Meshon! Ofc it's only a sketch so far, so i guess the cairns won't all stay vertically aligned like this (you know, a bit more wabi-sabi... ? I think the hyenas shouldn't be a problem in a medieval-european like setting, especially in a less "civilized" area. Looking forward to see what you're doing with this!

[Meshon]

A little progress. Mostly a bunch of things partly done I decided to try drawing this one all in Photoshop, other than the initial sketch. It's been useful trying it this way, but I really like having a few vector shapes underlying things, it helps speed up some parts of the process.

So this great huge thing has walked by, leaving rather large footprints and messing up the place. The footprints are going to be fun to get right! I think I mean that both sincerely and ironically.



cheers,
Meshon

[ChickPea]

This looks fun! And if we can have gnoll gods and giant footprints, I don't see why we can't have hyenas in medieval Europe.

Those footprints look a little terrifying.... :O

[Meshon]

I really struggled with the footprints. It seemed no matter what I did they looked like they were popping up out of the ground, rather than being pressed into it. I think I've finally found a reasonable solution. Some colour adjustments done as well. Details on the walls next!



cheers,
Meshon

[Meshon]

Details on the walls. Oh right! That's what I was going to do!

I find this always happens. I get distracted part way through the next step and end up doing something else. I'll come back to the walls a bit more later, but for now… roofs!

I'm also pushing the colour palette towards what I think is a more arid savannah look.



Feedback is certainly welcome if you have any, although I suppose I'm stubborn…

cheers,
Meshon

[Barek333]

So the color of the savannah seems really good to me, and again your black edges..like the edge of the straw hut are done so nicely..wish i can have that type of penmanship one day

As far as critique goes I think you did well with the footprints but the upper one is slightly different in style than the other three, probably you did it first? it is more..rugged...while the others are smoother...anyway they all look good but i prefer the top one. And the second point is the rubble on the second footprint. It cant be on top of the footprint since the foot is what broke the building and pressed the stones into the ground. So I would either put the rubble under the foot lines or make only some between the toes and arround the print visible while nothing in the print itself.

This little details just show how awesome your style is when only such little nitpicks can be found

Cheers,
Barek

[Meshon]

I think a large part of my "process" involves avoiding elements of the map and doing something else instead. It seems like each time I make a plan of what to work on next, I do something else instead. Sometimes it's because I'm not sure how to approach the thing, other times it's because I know it's just going to be a period of straight-forward but repetitive work. Cairns, I'm looking at you!

Here's the latest.



cheers,
Meshon

Edit: Sorry Barek, I hadn't refreshed my page and missed your post. Excellent point on the footprint, I can see it clearly now that you've pointed it out. There was, in fact, an entire sleep between the crack lines on that footprint and the lines on the others. I'll have to decide if I'm going to re-do the lines on the other three. As to the rubble in the footprint, my plan has been to "shade it in" to make those bricks look like they're pressed into the ground. I've been avoiding it because I'm not exactly sure what I'll do there Thanks so much for the good feedback!

[Meshon]

Full of Thanksgiving dinner (because Canada) I still managed to battle through the sleepies and get a little more done. I still haven't resolved the issues with the footprints; I'll probably get to those when I'm avoiding something else! It's interesting to think that my whole method of progress may involve productively avoiding things. Huh.



cheers,
Meshon

[Meshon]

I worked on the footprints and added some radial cracks, I think it works. The designer of the encounter also included a fire (shakes fist ) so I finally gave that a go. It's okay. It will do.

It still feels like there's heaps more to do, but it's getting close to done. I still have to attempt to make the rubble under the footprint look like it has been stepped on, and I'll need to do that with one of the cairns (not drawn yet) that has also been been stepped on and scattered. Of course, while I avoid doing that I'll hopefully get some other things finished up…



cheers,
Meshon