Infested Cave, Adept & Expert (Patreon)

Hey Adepts and Experts! Your alternate map this week is a different palette than the normal one, less sandy and rockier.  Gray rocks bring a completely different vibe to the map, perhaps colder than the original version. And don't worry, if you don't want this cave to be infested I've made sure to include a version of it with no signs bugs. 

1. I started off with a somewhat different layout than I ended up with, but it still bears similarities. I spent a lot of time at this stage and tried out a couple layouts because I hadn't drawn a cave map before and I wanted to take it slowly.

Looking around, I noticed there aren't many cave battle maps that I like. I found out why later, but it was a bit of an adventure trying to figure this one out.

2. My next version got a bit closer in some aspects, but also grew outward in ways I came to dislike. I actually drew the outlines for the walls and ground of this layout, but something about it didn't feel right (too sprawling maybe?). It sucks to waste time working on something that doesn't pan out, but it's worse to put out bad art. Anyway, I erased what I didn't like, sealed up the gaps and ended up with a manageable and mostly simple cave. 

You can also see at this stage my first attempts at making the cave look infested. This has proven to be a little problematic, as it goes against what my goal for all my maps: don't imply any story. The buggy theme kinda pushes out other uses for the map, which really rubbed me the wrong way. So after this step I made sure to only add buggy objects that could be easily removed.

3. Outlines are outlines, I feel like I never have much to say at this step. The rock walls were a real pain, I feel like they took forever to draw. I doubt it was much more work than my normal maps, but these outlines wore me down. I'm looking forward to making a plant filled map again. 

You guys like mushrooms? I swore to myself I wouldn't put glowing mushrooms in this cave (I feel like it's been done), but mushrooms just don't stand out much when they don't glow. 

4. Colors, BAM! I went through 5 or 6 different color palettes for this damn map looking for something interesting. And here we are, brown. What can you do? Anyway, once I settled on a palette things went pretty smoothly. 

The only problem, the thing that was bugging me about the map, is that there isn't a light source. A lot of map makers can get by without one, their outlines and palettes are enough, but I really rely on proper shadows to make my maps feel good. So I cheated a bit and added a ghostly light source, a lantern or dancing lights or something, around 8 feet high right were the cave opens up. I know that caves are supposed to be dark but that doesn't make for a good map. 

Anyway, I'm excited to make an outdoor map again. I'm not cut out for places with no obvious source of light (don't tell me to make my mushrooms glow, I won't). 

5. The alternate palette came surprisingly easily actually, I wasn't expecting that. I leaned further into the ghostly imaginary light source also and lit the place up better. Who doesn't have dark vision these days anyway, amIright? 

I added a tiny bit of fog around the buggy areas also and I dig how that turned out. A little more ominous, and it catches the slight glow from those freaky egg mounds (which are absolutely ripped off of chaurus eggs from Skyrim).