Peninsula, Adept & Expert (Patreon)

Welcome back Adepts and Experts! As you can see, your alternate map this week is fortless, a nice blank canvas with a dramatic drop into the water. I've got some ideas of how I'm going to use this one, which probably means you guys could come up with some real rad encounters here.

Oh, hey, remember the Adept/Expert-only post from last week? You guys gave a bunch of great ideas, and I think your opinions were pretty clear on what I should be doing! It's nice to have some direction in your art sometimes, and having a crowd of supportive patrons who know what they want is the best direction I can ask for. 

1. Boy, I had a hell of a time designing this map. How complicated can forts be, right? Heh. I think the real problem came when I decided what the environment around it should be because I didn't really want to drop it in the middle of a forest clearing (too much like last week's ruins, yeah?), I also didn't want to put it on a mountainside because I wanted to give room for planning an attack. Actually I very nearly put the fort on an island, and I'm not convinced that I shouldn't have stuck with that. 

So here's my reasoning for the environment I stuck with. With water taking up 1-2 sides of the map you can easily make the argument that the map is on a river, lake, or ocean without much finagling. That's versatile, right? It also makes approaching the fort more interesting, whoever is inside of it will expect attackers from the land of course so preparing an assault from the water might come off as a real sneaky plan. Beyond that, multiple terrains are just plain ol' interesting.

After that, the fort came together without much trouble. I wanted at least 1 tower, a crumbled gateway, and at least 2 alternate entrances due to damage. Sometimes setting rules for yourself is handy.

2. I guess you could call this a callback to the Jungle Ruins with all this rubble. JR stands out in my head because of how bored I got detailing rubble, so I suppose this was a callback in the worst way (for me). 

I must say, I'm getting pretty fast at throwing cliff faces together though I did mention a couple of weeks back that I would be fazing out the way I draw them, so that's a bittersweet revelation. The smaller rocks in the water are a little different than how I would normally draw them, however. They're reminiscent of how I drew similar rocks in Chain of Islands, they give the impression that you can stand on them somewhat easily. 

Yes, I'm still stealing trees from Forest Clearing. I would like to promise you that I won't do it again, but I'm a weak weak man who has drawn many many trees. 

3. The palette's a little funky, right? I can't get enough of vivid colors, especially when the water's involved. Overall, all the colors were pretty easy to pick. The water was a little tricky, I tend to lean towards grayish water, but once I got a nice gradient going it was all over. 

I've got one issue though. After I put the color in I couldn't help but feel like the map is too blank and empty, like there should be more going on. After last week's map, I felt the opposite though like I over-detailed everything, so I suppose this is my new struggle. Over-simplified is better than over-complicated though, right? Eh, I'm not convincing myself. I'll work it out.