[WIP] Elemental Temple "mini" dungeon

[Striogi]

So I recently saw and read through Dyson's Delve (if you're familiar with it) and it inspired me to practice a fairly simple multi-level stacked dungeon...

So I set to work... and came up with these four simple dungeons after about 1.5 hours (I was watching Netflix, like ya do). And of course, I haven't scanned the sketches yet, so here's a not-super-great cell phone photo.
Elemental-Sketch-1-4.jpg

I had a good time, and with the success and fun of the previous four, I went ahead and made 8 more levels... (I actually landed on my theme for the dungeon around level 7, which required a bit of a redesign of the first few levels) I'll show those later...

I didn't scan the sketches because I wasn't sure if I'd ink and scan them or try making them on GIMP... Today, in about an hour, I was able to put out this version of Level 1 (take a look at the lower left for comparison)
Elemental-L1.jpg

I'm a little torn. I'm planning on embellishing a lot of it with a tablet at home. Things like the hatching for the negative space, some dungeon dressing details, etc. I want to use snap to grid and mechanically straightened shapes for things like stairwells and walls.
So far, this map was done with just a mouse and snap-to-grid, but it feels really, really soulless.

Thoughts?

Time sunk in this so far: 7 hours.

[Rautatilhi]

Soulless? Some background maybe?
Elemental-L1_RT01a.jpg

The work could be faster, if you first put down a normal grid (crossing lines), and then erase what you don't need. After that you allways can select the walls and modify them, and then get an other layer and put down the new grids (these small crsosses).

[Striogi]

I'm sorry - I may have misled you.

Re: Speed
Total hours sunk in this is 7 because that includes the 12 levels that have been sketched out and the hour I spent futzing around with the digital map. So, about an hour to build the digital map, and that includes about 10 different versions of the grid, (still not happy with it), 4 attempts at the door, 2 attempts at stairs... so the drawing of the map went fast.

Further levels will go faster once I have standardized and can copy-pasta my doors, stairs and stuff like that. Since the grid is going to be the same for all of it, I'm good there, as well.

I want to keep a running tally on how many hours I spend on larger projects like this, because people are always asking me that question. "How long did it take you?" and I want to give an accurate answer.

Re: Color
Yeah, that's a good start. Maybe if I put it on a low-contrast parchment background. I don't like the maps looking too electronic.
I've always been a big fan of black and white and had been hatching and using pointalism on my maps long before I saw Dyson's maps and others. Mainly, I think, because it gives me time to work with the map and let my brain kick around ideas more freely.

[Rautatilhi]

I've got it now!

[Striogi]

I love how trying new things is such a major learning event, not just about what I'm doing, but about myself as well.

Sat down last night to work on this more, and realized a few things:
1. Since I'm doing this to be able to play digitally and I'm going to make it available in print, I need to up the resolution. 1200px square at 300 dpi is only 4 inches. >.<
2. I can't just resample it at 2400px, because all of the lower levels drawn and 2400px will look different and wrong.
3. I hated the doors on the above.

So I started over (no big deal) futzed around with the grid again, got something a bit better, I think. Then I took the opportunity to try out a few different things:

1. I don't really know what it's called. Grid-style mapping? You know, where every grid box has a specific object in it, be it open square, door, trapped door, blah blah blah? Here's an example: http://donjon.bin.sh/adnd/dungeon/
-- Converting the map to that doesn't work too well for 10' wide halls; centering a 5' door is a pain, and it will be a total mess when it comes to moving through the door in a VTT like Roll20.
2. Dropped a parchment background on it. Pretty, but keeping it would make me have to redo the grid pattern, and it didn't enhance the positive/negative space issue.
3. Airbrushed around the outside to darken the negative space over parchment - Officially Meh. Back to being too high-res and muddy.
4. Manually hatched the negative space on the computer. Miserable experience in GIMP, so I moved over to ArtRage where it was somewhat more natural. This worked better, but I've figured out that I HAVE to have something going on in the background that I can use to distract me, otherwise I start getting bored and overly nitpicky as to line quality for the visual "noise" of the hatching.
-- in essence, I need noise while I make noise to quiet the noise in my head.

Looked at the hatching over the parchment. Pretty, probably a good thing to keep around. And I still like hatching better than the airbrush.

Then went downstairs, made dinner and sat with the wife and watched some of our shows while I manually inked level 1.

Yes. All that and I still inked Lv 1
...Probably because I didn't want to start on a new map.

Time sunk in this so far: 9 hours.

[Striogi]

Okay, here it is... "Done". I'm not going to post it in Finished, until I have the whole collection complete.

Here's the digital version
ElemTempleL1Sm.jpg

Here's the analog version, with some digital embellishment.
ETLv1Hand.jpg

Now that I have some doors done, and the grid and layers figured out, the other digital layers should be a snap.


Time sunk in this so far: 14 hours.
(this includes manually inking the original layers)

also, I'm not super pleased with the threshold feel of the original inks, so as much of a pain it is to scan the maps in greyscale and them modify them to black and white, I guess I'll be doing that for the analog maps

[Bogie]

Nice work!