Griffin's Peak, an abandoned shack in the middle of a forest

[David Fink Barrentine]

I'm new to this site, was turned onto it just yesterday, and I want to jump in feet first with a recently finished map. This is Griffin's Peak. It's the first of 20ish maps that I'm starting to get together for an adventure that I'm writing. I've got most everything written up at this point so I'm currently focusing on the art now. I posted to reddit and Facebook when I was finished and was told to check this site out. I'm really hoping to start using this site more to get better aware with techniques out there and connect with a like minded community.

As for this map, it started as a hand drawn sketch that was refined and uploaded into photoshop. I used my wacom tablet to draw all the line work from there and do the colors. There were some slight tweaks made, initially the well outside the shack was twice the size and felt out of place compared to the sizes of everything else. After that the compass, border and typography was placed in illustrator.

[vb.maps]

I love spider webs, looks great

[David Fink Barrentine]

I love spider webs, looks great

Thank you! This is a low level dungeon and the well is filled giant spiders which is the boss of area unless they choose to fight against an NPC I have set up at the back of the area.

[Bogie]

Welcome to the Guild David. Very nice map, thanks for sharing. I don't hand draw maps so I am not an expert, but I agree that the size of the well looks good now. The one thing that jumps out at me is the dark line around the forest edges looks a little heavy. Otherwise looks great.

[David Fink Barrentine]

The one thing that jumps out at me is the dark line around the forest edges looks a little heavy.

I was hoping that having a thicker outline on the trees would sort of reinforce the dungeon-esque feel to the full layout, but I agree they may be a bit thick. I've tried thinning out outlines for the next map I started working on but I'm barely into it so I'm not sure how it's going to come out as of yet.

And thank you for the comment.

[damonjynx]

I like it. I'm guessing you're a fan (aren't we all?)of Mike Schley. Your work is in a very similar style.

[David Fink Barrentine]

I am. I fell in love with his art style with the Dnd 5e starter set and started trying to push my own map work after I saw it. Previously it was nothing more than rough lines on grid paper to get the bare semblance of the are that I was trying to convey. He was the one that turned me onto this site after posting in a facebook group.

[MistyBeee]

Creepy ! But it's a superb job. The spider webs works really well ! Congrats and welcome !

[David Fink Barrentine]

Thank you very much, MistyBeee. The spider webs was the more time consuming part of this map. I'd never done them before and wasn't entirely certain how to place them without having them dominate too much. I ended up doing them 3 different times before I settled with this one.

[Ilanthar]

Very nice work, David! It has indeed a "Mike Schley" flair .