Hand-drawn Star Trek battlemap...

[mearrin69]

I'm working on a battlemap for my upcoming Star Trek game. This is on 34"x26" (I think) paper with a 1" grid...standard stuff from an office store disposable easel pad. I'm sketching it in pencil then the walls will be colored with Sharpies and details done using Prismacolor design markers (though I might color the floor with colored pencil or crayon). This one is of the bridge and surrounding areas but I'll probably do one of main engineering, the cargo bay, and maybe one or two other areas.
M

Edit: Drat. No image upload for some reason. I'll come back and post the pics later.
Edit 2: Back now. Posted the original with a grid superimposed to help me draw it out on paper and a couple of in-progress shots.

[mearrin69]

Now, given the work I'm probably going to put into this to make it look nice, I'm reconsidering my use of the cheap Office Depot gridded pad paper. It's thin and is already pretty roughed up just from me working with it. The stuff's good for quick battlemaps but maybe not for something I'd like to be more permanent. I think I'll finish it up just to a rough stage so it can be used in a game...but start a new one for the full treatment on a large sheet of decent white posterboard. This thing would be toast after just a few uses and storage in our not-so-climate-controlled gameroom.
M

Edit: Even so, here's another shot, with the walls mostly finished and some consoles drawn in. On the nice version I'm going to do up the ceiling-facing panels with some LCARS-looking graphics - so they'll be black with brightly colored buttons and such. And, yeah, that's my Sylvester and Tweety pencil box!
M

[eViLe_eAgLe]

Woot! Sylvester and tweety for the win! But, nice progress man! I can already see this will be awesome!

[mearrin69]

Thanks! I hope it turns out nicely...want my players to have a good experience with the game so I've been kind of going all out.

I just went by Office Depot and picked up some pretty cool poster board...it has a barely visible (to me anyway, maybe someone with better eyes can see it) 1/2" grid on it. Sadly, it's only 22"x28" so it won't cover quite the same ground as the larger paper (27"x29"). The bridge is 14" across and it's about 22" from the outer edges of the surrounding hallways fore/aft and port/stbd. Still, it'll be a nicer finished product I think. Hopefully I'll get some work done on it tonight.
M

[mearrin69]

So much for that concept. The gridded poster board was too small to present the deck the way I wanted...in addition to the fact that the grid was too faint (and broad) to be of much use and was printed on the shiny side of the board (which is unforgiving of pencil marks and doesn't take marker all that well). I've continued with the grid paper version.
M

[mearrin69]

Think I've got the hang of it...now it's just a matter of filling in the details. I'm using my wife's extensive collection of (delicious and expensive) Prismacolor markers for the first time. They're sweet...but I've never really used markers so it's a bit of a learning process. You can't see it here but I've managed to do a bit of shading on the chairs and structural elements.
M

[tilt]

looks good, personally I'd gone for doing it all in photoshop and then printing and taping the map together though *hehe*... but this is a very nice personal touch

[mearrin69]

I'm with you on the Photoshop thing...it would be easier, really.

The bridge is coming along. Going to color the carpets and do up the consoles next...gotta break out my LCARS console references. Hope it looks good but it could go south easily.
M

[mearrin69]

I'm pretty happy with how the consoles turned out. Didn't really take that long either. Now to do some more.
M

[tilt]

looks great - nice colors