Great maps invyctis. I really like your black walls, your mosaic tile floors, and your subdued colour scheme. Have you ever considered lighting your maps with white/white-overlay?
These 1200x1200 maps were made in Photoshop CS6 for my Dark Sun campaign. They are sized for a 50x50 grid.
The Blasted Spire lies partially buried in the Sea of Silt near the ancient city of Giustenal. The First floor is covered in a foot of silt, the basement is completely submerged in silt, and the top floor is clear. The Blasted spire was used as a military watch tower hence the ballistae on the third floor, the watch slept in the tower on the first floor, and the basement was used for interrogations (thanks Bogie for the interrogation room preset!)
Since the ancient city of Giustenal has fallen into oblivion, the basement has been inhabited by a Krag (a Dark Sun undead cleric) that kills indiscriminately and drags bodies to its lair hoping they will turn into undead servants (kraglings)
Anyway enough lore here's the map.
I am including versions with and without the interior silt covering the floors, as well as .png files without the exterior background so the tower can be used more easily in non-Dark Sun/desert campaigns.
The walls in the basement are not even close to perfectly symmetrical but I didn't feel like remaking them so it is what it is =)
Entry with silt
Silt-BlastedSpire-1-EntryFloor.jpg
Entry no silt
Silt-BlastedSpire-1-EntryFloor-nosand.jpg
Entry no background
BlastedSpire-EntryFloor.png
Basement with silt
Silt-BlastedSpire-KragLair.jpg
Basement no silt
Silt-BlastedSpire-3-basement.jpg
Basement no background
BlastedSpire-Basement.png
Top floor
Silt-BlastedSpire-2-TopFloor.jpg
Top floor no background
BlastedSpire-TopFloor.png
Great maps invyctis. I really like your black walls, your mosaic tile floors, and your subdued colour scheme. Have you ever considered lighting your maps with white/white-overlay?
Thanks Jacktannery! I am new to this and lighting is something I have yet to really dabble in. I'm not sure what you mean by a white/white overlay. Can you link me an example or better yet a tutorial?
Thanks again for the comments!
I didn't mean to be so cryptic! Most people do lighting layers using 'overlay' layer blending - ie they draw white over light bits and black over dark bits and then set both layers to overlay. It helps provide a bit of shade and brightness and the contrast helps maps look better, for some tastes. I tend not to use overlay layers and instead use flat areas of black and white set at c. 40% opacity, which makes for much more extreme contrast and very bleached out looking maps. For example, see the first three maps in 'Orcus Conversion' link in my sig. The effect is most obvious perhaps in the second map (the blue one) where I have drawn large areas of white (at 40% opacity) over the map to represent sunlight and it bleaches out colours and makes detail look faded.
So what I meant was: have you considered adding differential lighting to your maps, either by using layers of black and white (or yellowish colours) set to overlay, or else not set to overlay'.
Ah ok I see what is being done there in your orcus maps! Yeah that is a really nice finishing touch I will definitely have to try out the technique. You created some very cool detailed shadows in some of those maps, subtle but powerful effects.
Once again thanks for the advice and mini tutorial!