Unctious Underdark - encounter maps for Out of the Abyss

[pelinorerevived]

I'm a long time lurker and infrequent contributor. This is my first time posting my WIP on Cartographer's Guild, but I thought I would share my process with all my fellow cartographers.

In the past I stuck to tools like Campaign Cartographer and good old pen, pencil and ink to draw my maps, but for this I am doing most of my work in Procreate on my iPad Pro, with a little help from Photoshop where a little extra heavy lifting is required. I wouldn't say that I have a particular style, but as you will see from the below I am a great fan of Mike Schley.

I'm trying to create some encounter scenes for random encounters in my Out of the Abyss campaign. The first one that I decided to tackle is the Boneyard. Here is a small (6" by 7") snippet of what will be a larger battlemap (22" x 16"). I set the document up at 140ppi.

Boneyard_WIP1.jpg

First up I drew the cavern walls with a nice thick custom pen, then I set about inking in some bones against one of the cavern walls with a thinner version of the same pen (1). I wasn't pleased with the effect, I wanted to give the impression of a waist deep pile of bones.

So then I drew a 1" by 1" pattern of bones and exported it to Photoshop. Using the offset tool in photoshop I turned it into a seamless texture. I had to export it back into Procreate to tidy it up a little at the seams.

I then created a new layer in my procreate drawing and laid it under my already drawn bones (2). I erased a little around the edges with a soft airbrush to give it the illusion of depth. I liked the effect, but I decided to add a little more darker ink in spots to break up the repeating pattern and shade a little around the edges of the cavern wall.

Then I decided it would be kind of neat to use my seamless pattern (3) at low opacity as a floor texture. Again, I'll pick out some of the details to break up the pattern and give the floor a little more texture.

I'm working on this daily, so I'll be posting frequent updates. I hope you all enjoy.