August's Third Map Preview - Lawhon's Ferry (Patreon)

Hey everyone,

Time for the last preview of the month - the Third Map. We asked you to vote for this one at the start of the month, from a shortlist of 'island' ideas that were suggested by Patrons last month.  The winner was Jim Lawhon's idea of a ferry-trading post on a river island.  So, in honour of Jim, here's Lawhon's Ferry:

We also decided to add a cellar to go underneath the main shop, in the rocky mass, and also wanted to provide access via the river so there's a river-gate too.

We have also included a no-raft version, in case that works better for your storyline.

The Map in Progress

As we were making this, we thought we'd keep screenshots of various stages throughout the process of turning a sketch map into a full battlemap. It began life as a pencil drawing on a gridded pad, and this gets brought into Photoshop.  The first work goes into the landscape, blocking out notable terrain features and shadows. Then texture work, again tweaking details as it comes together.  As you'll see, the colour of the water changes lots of times!   The final elements are to map out the buildings, texture, and then populate with stuff.  Not counting saves etc, the time elapsed from first to last is about 6 hours.  Anyway, thought you might find it interesting to see some elements of the process.