Dec 2013 Entry - Tower of Tyrs

[Cunning Cartographer]

I made a pretty large hand drawn tile made up of hundreds of blocks, then I paste it over my entire map and mask out the edges, fill in gaps, so that the patterned effect is hidden whilst not having to draw hundreds of blocks for each map (though it still take a REALLY long time to do). Reason being is that the few times I've tried to do maps with walls I draw and draw and draw, and then sometimes when I zoom out I notice that there's big size variations in the blocks and a lack of consistency (really starts messing with your mind drawing them over and over ). I tried to come up with an easier method and that was the result, which I'm really happy with as I can rotate, flip, move the tile for each map so it always looks unique

Work smarter not harder!

[Cunning Cartographer]

### Latest WIP ###

WIP-Walls2.jpg


Walls and floor tiles pretty much in place. Adding details such as railings and stairs slowly, red rough marks show where the ink details still need to be added. Did a rough shadowing so people can see how the layers/levels overlap (for players dropping to lower levels, or climbing up to higher ones, etc.). Still not entirely sure how some of the misc./optional non adventure rooms are going to be decorated yet

[Bogie]

Coming along good, hope you can get it finished in time.

[Cunning Cartographer]

As unfinished as it looks, I'm actually on the home straight

I'd say with maps this complex 50% of my time goes into the actual design/layout/story, then 20% of time on the walls themselves. This one is even more complicated as parts of the lower levels can be viewed from upper levels so I have to make sure things line up both aesthetically and functionally (no point letting them jump down onto a ledge that is impossible to get back up from!). Flooring and doors 10%, inking room objects 10%, colouring the map and adding details 10%. So yeh, Believe it or not I'm probably 80% done

[Cunning Cartographer]

Inking pretty much finished, the rooms with red question marks on them are areas I'm probably going to add a little bit more detail to, but after that I'm going to get the maps coloured and textured. As I intend to sell this set of maps I'm going to keep it at a 30% view (with labels), but will add magnified areas on the map to show the detail a little better.

### Latest WIP ###
WIP-Walls3.jpg

[Bogie]

Your style is great for publishing, nice clean lines. Mine looks good on a monitor, but terrible when squeezed down onto a magazine page. Do you have a commission or buyer yet?

[Cunning Cartographer]

I'm going to self publish on Drive Thru RPG/RPG Now, etc. I make these first and foremost for my Sunday D&D group, usually a lot rougher than this level of detail. However, as this one is going to be such a big adventure, and it ties in with the CG Challenge, I figured I'd put a bit more time in and make something that is sellable

[Cunning Cartographer]

Final... version... almost.... done!

[Cunning Cartographer]

### Winner ###

Tower-Display.jpg

Done

Edit:

So I based my map around the 5 room dungeon, as opposed to simply having 5 rooms (as mentioned, I'll be using this map for my own group so they'll like a few extra rooms to explore). Going into the full details of navigating the complex will take too long to do here, but needless to say players will have to enter rooms from upper and lower levels, navigate around the piles of dirt from the collapsed in half buried tower. Players could just go through the five rooms if they wished, however, extra rooms would reveal some nice loot items and rewards. Some of the rooms will have more items added to them, but for the purposes of this challenge I focused more on decorating those rooms that were immediately accessible and necessary for the 5 room challenge.

[KenG]

I really like the way this turned out. Great job.