Prepared! In Ice and Snow

[Meshon]

So for the final map that I'm doing for the Prepared! series we decided to switch things around. I'm sending the writer some sketches and he'll make an adventure. Here's the three ideas I drew, we'll see which one he takes…

I had said that I was keen on trying to draw snow and ice, so that's the theme. All the maps will be cold. It was interesting to try to come up with drawings that have potential but no defined story. I think the terrace map is the most open to interpretation, while the Icy Ark is the most strongly suggestive. The gate is sort of… cliché, though that's not necessarily a bad thing.

The-Shattered-Gate.jpg

Frigid-Terrace.jpg

Icy-Ark.jpg

Of course, if I thought there would be time I'd tell him to combine all three, but I have a feeling that I would have to give up on things like eating and sleeping to get them all done in time.

Stay tuned for developments…

cheers,
Meshon

[Abu Lafia]

Very nice setting sketches Meshon. They look really promising! I like the idea of an ice (-trapped?) ship a lot. Also prettty cool to hear that you decided to switch the working progress for this piece. Although i'm really looking forward to see which map you choose and work on, i hope you get some food and sleep nonetheless.

[Meshon]

We're going with the terrace for this one. I'll keep the other sketches around, who knows? For now I'm just trying out a few things. As usual, I am to do something that I have no idea how to do! In this case, I don't know how to cover something with snow and ice, so this is mostly just experimenting. Trying things out until I get something I'm happy with. So far the ice has been a bust. I have another idea to try for next time. I'd really like it to look like it has some depth so I'm going to try really deep blue in the centre.

The snow. Really, right now all I have to worry about is laying in some shapes, detail can come later. The problem is that the snow is made up of very irregular edges and very hard edges; irregular where its subject to wind drift, hard where it contacts the stonework. I'll probably end up needed a few layers to make the snow fit right.

I did add a tree though… more details and probably more snow to come!

Frigid-Terrace.jpg

cheers,
Meshon

[ChickPea]

I've never tried ice or snow, so I'm interested to see what you come up with.

[pasis]

This will be nice one to follow. Making snow and ice lively and interesting is indeed a challenge. I keep my fingers crossed.

[Meshon]

Yeah… ice and snow. Brrrr. It's a big mental obstacle at this point. Based on my previously established process, I hope to come up with some great snow and ice by procrastinating a lot!

One thing that doing this map/adventure process in reverse has shown me is that I usually build a map out of discrete elements, and tend to work one more or less to completion before moving on to the next. This time I really had to consider the whole map for awhile and get all the elements roughed in before making the pieces look good. That said, here's the working copy I sent JonS so that he can get started on the encounter.

Frigid-Terrace.jpg

The snow I've painted on is a placeholder, just to give a clear idea that it's all over the place. Now I can start making things look right.

cheers,
Meshon

[Meshon]

I'll call this an acceptable version of the ice wall around the terraces. I still need it to extend a bit further into the darker edges, but I realized that the image in my head of how I want it to look might be several months of practice in the future. So this will do. I can't decide what I'm going to work on tomorrow when I am avoiding working on the snow…

Frigid-Terrace.jpg

cheers,
Meshon

Edit: Aggh! My palette is showing! Obviously I need to catch up on a bit of sleep. Hopefully I'll remember to remove those big blobs next time I post.

[Abu Lafia]

Great job, making the ice blocks outline-less. They look excellent! Have you considered leaving the saturated blue "outer" outline away too (or rather as white edge)? I imagine it fitting better, and might also give the whole ice wall a more "transparent" look. Maybe it isn't even necessary to extend much further in the corners, as it gives a good idea of massive ice already.
I like the overall layout of the terraces a lot and the placeholder snow seems to be in just the right locations in my view. It looks as if you could drew on your research on "sand behavior" some months ago?
Looking forward what you'll come up with while procrastinating the snow

[Meshon]

You remembered the sand! Yeah, I was thinking about that stuff a lot but then I realized the space I've made is too complicated to worry about it overmuch. The thing that's driving me crazy right now are the stairs. The broad stairs seemed like a good idea at the time, but I'm not getting them very satisfactory. I ended up using a bunch of gradients and I'll see how I feel about them later. Lots of "trying things out" happening on this map.

I've mostly been avoiding the stairs by fiddling around with little details. Probably will do a bunch of shadows for the walls and level changes next.

Frigid-Terrace.jpg

Meshon

[Meshon]

This map is producing an unusual amount of frustration and stalling for me. I think part of what's happening is that I really don't know that much about drawing yet, so almost every task I approach has a certain amount of "how do I do this?" time involved. So I start into the map and I'm learning how to do things on the fly but I'm also expecting to produce an actual finished map at the end. I think I need to work in a habit of practice and do some studies. I don't actually really know what "studies" mean to an artist, but for me it would involve inventing some small tasks and and then drawing them. I actually did a tiny bit of this for the crystals; there are a few drawings of crystals on my hard drive that will never see the light of day, but they helped me to move forward with the ones on the map.

Anyway, it's getting close. I think I just need to do a bunch of "painting" now, plus some clean-up of things that are still in the map but aren't intended to be part of the final piece.
Frigid-Terrace.jpg

cheers,
Meshon