Haunted Mansion: An After-the-Fact WIP

[Ashenvale]

Continuing my thought from above, I'm sure you all know that one-point perspective is a visual design schematic in which all linear elements (the edges of all forms) vanish (trace back in space) to a single vanishing point (a dot that I set in the middle of the picture plane for each individual room). Below are several examples of one-point perspective. Lay a ruler along the edges of any form, and you'll find it intersects at the vanishing point.

Making every room have its own one-point perspective violates a major rule of perspective for the map as a whole. As a whole, the map should have a single, common set of vanishing points. Put differently, if you chopped off the top floors of a house revealing the ground floor and its walls, as seen from above, all rooms would vanish to a single vanishing point in the middle. Each room wouldn't have its own vanishing point. All rooms would share a single vanishing point. I decided to break that rule and give each room its own vanishing point. Why? Not because I'm brave or ingenious. I did so because I'd seen the Clue game board and the Kill Dr. Lucky game board do this successfully. I followed their lead.

The resulting effect is pretty good. Each room on my map has its own dynamic pull. But the artist in me instantly recognizes that the rooms don't hold together across the entire map because each room has its own gravitational center diverging from the whole. Each room's strength becomes the entire map's collective flaw. I couldn't have it both ways. I accepted that overall flaw to gain the power if each room's individual integrity and allure.

You all probably saw all of this the moment you looked at my map. My point here is simply that this was a conscious decision.

(Anybody still awake?)