Propless Desert Tomb, Adept & Expert

Welcome back, Adepts/Experts! As was highly requested recently, your alt version of this week's map is propless, though admittedly I chose discriminately what is and isn't a prop (meaning I decided to leave the sand piles, rubble, raised platforms, and columns in). If there's interest I'll go back and cut all the rest of the prop-like items as well, so let me know in the comments if you'd be interested in that sort of thing. 

Anyway, let's talk about the map!

1. Going into this map I had a couple plans in mind. I wanted: a symmetrical layout, the walls to be thick stone (thicker than my usual dungeon walls (I know that's a strange thing to go into a map with, but I've been meaning to do so for a while)), and both inside and outside areas. The inside/outside thing makes the lighting tricky, which I'll talk about in step 3, but the other 2 are easy enough. 

The way I always start my maps (and my dungeon maps in particular) is by looking up inspiration and reference. I think this is a very important step as this is where I look to see what did and didn't work in other peoples' maps, be it interesting rooms I can steal or props I hadn't thought of or eye-catching dungeon gimmicks. Back in art college one of the things I was taught repeatedly was to steal everything you like and I've taken that to heart. 

2. As time goes on and I keep making maps I find that the stroke I use for my brushes gets smaller and smaller when I'm drawing outlines. While that's usually alright I think I took it a little too far in this map and it shows in unfortunate ways. Specifically the rocks have a much darker outline than almost anything else while the details in the tile floors are much too small to be visible. It's something I'll have to be more careful of moving on, though it's easy to get carried away when working on such a small scale to get just the right amount of wiggly lines on each tile. 

The only other notable thing about this map's outlines is the way I drew the sand. It's been a while since I drew sand, I think Desert Bridge was the last time (though there might not be much sand in it if I recall correctly), so I wasn't sure how I wanted to handle it. The thing is, less is more for sandy textures. The less detailed it is the more believable it will look, which coincidentally was my thought process for the snow in last week's map. That's all well and good but I definitely went overboard on the sand piles' details, which, in hindsight, are much too detailed, though I suppose they do get the correct sense of height and shape across. Eh, live and learn. 

3. So, the thing about shading indoor areas is that I can't use the same methods I use for the outside stuff, it just doesn't look right. Typically I would identify a light source and take shadows from that, but since there aren't windows in your average dungeon you gotta get those shadows somewhere else, because realistically the entire room would be extremely dark because no light can reach it, which just looks bad (and doesn't make for a good map). Or, you could just put shadows on things and count on no one caring as much as you do. 

That's what it comes down to, moving past how you want the lighting to work and instead focusing on just making it look cool (which is surprisingly easy if you're willing to mess with contrast, vibrancy, and brightness).