Stormy Cliffside Arena, Adept & Expert (Patreon)

Hey folks! This week your Adept version of the map is set during a storm, which is quickly becoming my favorite way to alter my maps. Maybe the fighting pit becomes muddy and slippery in the rain, making it all rough terrain? Or maybe the pillar at the center is made of metal, attracting lightning at the end of every other round? I'm a fan of how dramatic this map becomes with stormy weather, so I'm sure it can make for an interesting fight.

Anyway, let's talk about the map!

1. The rough sketch. This map was the next up on the poll from a while back, so I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do with it, though I guess I hadn't thought too much about what 'cliffside' or 'arena' meant. The picture I had in my head was of the final Skellige fistfighting arena in Witcher 3, where you fought the champion in a walled arena by the ocean. It might have been fun to have a sharp dropoff into water, but giving the appearance of that much distance proved to be a bit tricky and messed with my eyes so I changed my plans.

As for making an arena.. at the end of the day I wanted to make a fighting pit so I drew a fighting pit. Flavor-wise, it's more the kind of place that local farmers will gather at night for a fight club than where warriors will come from afar to test their mettle. I kinda like the farmer fight club more anyway, makes for a fun thing to come across while traveling the dusty path.

2. Outlines. My first pass at the outlines included a wooden walkway up the cliffside (not pictured), which gave the map a more.. legitimate feel? Like whoever set up the fighting pit actually put some work into it maybe. I liked the idea of a wooden walkway but after wasting around 2 hours on it it still didn't look right. So much for trying new things. Anyway, you'd be surprised how quick and easy it is to cut out a little stone path up a cliffside while hopped up on disappointment. 

As a side note, I assembled this map much faster than I normally do due to still trying to get my life together after being out of town last week. Anyway, I may or may not have snatched the trees and bushes from the forest clearing map (don't tell anyone, shhh). 

3. Color. In the early days, I would split up this step into 2 stages, coloring and shading. I've streamlined this so much however that coloring takes little more than an hour on average, so that isn't even worth mentioning anymore! It may not come across, but I'm very pleased about that because coloring often takes an annoyingly long time. 

We are living in a post-Forest Clearing society folks, as I now look back at that map for inspiration in my colors. The clearing came out so pretty that I think that's now my touchstone, the basis color-wise for maps from here on out. Honestly, I still don't think I've captured that same magic with this map, but I intend on working out what went so right about it.