October Entry: Monastery of the Five Disciples

[terrainmonkey]

okay, well... i guess it's unanimous. cool. already started working on a few ideas, and the sketch of the bottom level which will be posted in the next few days. although, judging from the other entries so far i may have an uphill battle ahead of me. this is one of the reasons i like these challenges, because it forces me to take my map making to the next level just to see what i can accomplish.

so here's a bit of background first, because i like to have an idea of WHY this particular place is here instead of just drawing a map with no exterior logic if you understand what i'm getting at.

This is going to be a monastery of The Lawbringer, a diety in my campaign, much like st. cuthbert, only more inquisitorial. The priests of the lawbringer espouse the following five disciplines in every day life: Peace, Honor, Devotion, Purity, and Brotherhood.

The following image is from a scroll that gives the basics of each discipline and how one should live the life of a follower of The Lawbringer.

[terrainmonkey]

so here are a few sketches i've done. i've decide to make this kind of a work in progress, show you how i design maps kind of thing. when i saw this, i decided i was going to push myself to greater artistic heights. one has a tendency to keep doing old reliable and not progressing beyond a certain point because it is comfortable to do so. "Why go the extra mile when what i'm doing works for me?" kind of thing.

that being the case, i looked all over the net for pictures, found some great ones, and thanks to Neon and a few others, as well as the great Cathedral book by David Macaulay (BTW, if you haven't picked this book up i suggest you do. great resource in cathedral, castle, mosque building. beautiful work.) was able to capture the idea that i wanted to explore.

anyway, here's the initial sketches. hodgepodge i know, but there is an organization that's going through my head with this. i'll post more later.

[NeonKnight]

Looks good. The only thing I didn't post about my works were the Pen-n-Paper Sketches I staterd with.

Good to see our though processes are similar.

[terrainmonkey]

okay, here's a WIP for what i've got so far. need to put the pews in, altar, etc. i'm also working on the balcony for this, and that will be posted tomorrow. i'm lucky in that i have the next 3 days off, and i can really hammer this one out.

suggestions are welcome. note that i still have a few ideas concerning the floors, so i'm not entirely done with that just yet.

[ravells]

Thanks for posting the sketches. I love to see how people work up their maps.

[Gamerprinter]

Strange I notice that the columns with the slight drop shadow, though a simple solution really does look like it stands upright, even without a bevel. I think its the sharpness of the columns with the softness of the shadow behind that really makes this work.

I like your balcony at the back of the cathedral.

And I just realized that you have your cathedral setup to face the other way - nothing wrong with that, I just suddenly noticed that!

[RobA]

It is nice to see you added some detail on the unseen side of the picture provided!

-Rob A>