Ongoing project to map...everything.

[Jacktannery]

Superb work Askren. Really love the colours on the last few maps and your water is wonderful (albeit a bit wavy inside the walled area).

[Askren]

So I'm working on a few new things, namely the second floor of my castle even though I haven't finished the first one yet. I probably shouldn't take on that many projects, but I want to try a few new techniques for doing things like windows, battlements, and other details.

I also started on the Dungeon which is in a very rough state, but you can see where I'm going with it. I'm actually kind of happy with the color going on through the tile floor, and I think the brick edgework came out nicely, I just need to tweak it a bit and then color match it. Also there's the tile/cave transitions I haven't really done, which I'm experimenting with techniques for. Also this map is gonna have a lot of natural cave features, and as my other cave map I'm working on made me realize, I'm downright awful at natural stone. So I'll be working on those too.

Dungeon WIP
Brinewall Dungeon.jpg

And because I realized no one would ever take up my request to do this map, I just sat down with a beer and started it myself. Because I have no idea how to make realistic-looking region maps with nice textures and stuff, I just took the easy route and went parchment+brushes. It's quick, dirty, and ugly, but it's better than nothing.
Brinestump Marsh.jpg

[Askren]

Vencarlo's Apartment, Curse of the Crimson Throne
Vencarlo.jpg

Warden's Shack- Second Floor, Jade Regent
Walthus Second.jpg

Brinestump Cave, Jade Regent
Brinestump Cave.jpg

[madcowchef]

I think your water on the wardens shack is far more convincing than the water you used in the cave. Good layout for your cave system.

[Askren]

Yeah, I agree. The problem is, water is EXTREMELY hard to get right, and most of the time is just me mashing textures together (good, relatively flat, conservatively-lit water textures are hard to come by), and hoping I can stumble into the same effect I had last time, which I rarely can reproduce. I haven't used the cave map, so I may have time to fix it between now and then, since it was kind of rushed to get done in time for my session on Thursday (shame on me for assuming a simple cave would be easier to slap together than a house or something).

Personally, I like floor texture you used in your caves much better, but I couldn't recreate it.

[madcowchef]

I feel your pain. I want someone with an ultralight to fly around taking pictures of water from a top down view day and night! I set up templates with a layer for each texture and then set up a layer mask so I don't lose any of my textures and import them between files as needs be. The advantage of my battlemaps is their simplicity so I can take that time to get some nice textures without doing all the hard work of adding much in the way of features, unlike the higher detail work you're doing. If CG textures allowed it I'd gladly hand out any of the textures I've reworked from their originals.

[Kennyt]

I really like your work on the top map,your choice of floor textures is spot on! would you mind sharing your cobblestone texture? Thanks!

My only critique would be to choose a different wall texture - particularly the "natural" cavern sections. the bevel seems to regular to be natural and the amount of emboss on the rooms vs the low amount on grey walls seems a bit distracting - maybe consider a light emboss on that?


also maybe take a look at after selecting you walls and before adding the bevel, to "distort selection" just a tad - then adding the bevel? sitting at my computer at the moment so just trying to dream this up but may be a viable option?

[Askren]

I'm not sure if you mean the bricks lining the wall or the actual stone, the first of which being an idea I had and put a ton of time into (Those round rooms? Yeah, those were made one brick at a time), but am kind of wishing I used a higher-res texture because they're too blurry for me. I'll try some sharpening filters and overlays to see if I can't salvage them, but I may just replace them altogether. The stone behind it, though, all placeholder. For me, though, the stone walls in dungeons is like, the very last thing I do. But walls are always a weak point of mine, I'm working on it.

The floor I used there is on CGtextures, I didn't do anything special to it other than some tuning to bring out details and get a color I wanted.
FloorsPortuguese0085

[Askren]

Like I said, I'm an idiot and I re-do a lot of things because what's an artist who doesn't hate his own work?

I went back and started my Thistletop Dungeon level 1 from scratch because my group is just about to get there, and I figure I should have a decent map ready for them. It's still a work in progress, I hate the beds and will swap those out, and the cave area is empty because I'm still messing around with ways to get the walls right. My current experiment (not shown) does the job, but it's not something I can readily repeat on other maps, so it's not really the one I want to go with. Also playing with some lighting here, not shown is my messing around with making the dungeon dark, but I scrapped those ideas because they kind of clash with the idea that players have light in-game.
Thistletop 1.jpg
I've got the second level in the works, but it's not remotely done. Also, an idea I've been messing with is leaving the doors off the map, or doing a door-less version, so that I can do the doors right in Roll20 so they can open and close. Maybe, we'll see.

Also, while I'm here, I'll throw up the progress I made on this Brinewall Castle map. I actually got most of the walls done a while ago, but didn't update with it. I had it on the back burner because the group I need it for keeps cancelling sessions, so at this rate I may never actually need it. The walls are actually pretty simple, just time-consuming and I'm thinking of upping the resolution of future maps to 200x200 to make them a little bit more crisp. It's weird, I haven't been back to this one in a while, so I kind of want to re-do huge chunks of it based on new techniques I've been using. Maybe I will, I don't know yet.
Brinewall.jpg

[Blinded]

Thank you for sharing your work - I love the changes in the new thistletop; the layout is the same but they are visually so different I know I will end up using both and changing the rotation. My bet is my players don't notice