Rocky Pass, Adept & Expert (Patreon)

Hello Adepts/Experts, I'm back for a rare 2 map week! Don't be too freaked out though, I skipped a week earlier in the month for my vacation so this is all on par for a regular month. Anyway, this time your alternate version is an Autumnal recoloring!  Using my alt Forest Outcrop map as reference I swapped out the vibrant greens and blue shadows for more subdued oranges and browns, making the two maps work very well for side-by-side encounters during the Fall months. Or, as some of you have pointed out, use these Autumn maps for sunset encounters- fight some bandits dramatically as evening comes near!

1. This one takes inspiration from one of my early successful maps, the Mountain Checkpoint- a narrow gap between steep rock walls where some enterprising bandits/deserters/legitimate soldiers had set up a checkpoint. I wanted to capture that same vibe, the feeling of walking through a tight pass, but in a more versatile map (and before you suggest it, yes I'm considering adding a checkpoint or barrier to this one too). The layout I went with works well with the majority of my forest maps and nearly every one that includes dirt roads while also aiding in the transition to rockier terrain, making it a solid addition to the roster. 

2. If you've been a patron for long you'll notice that early every part of this one is stylistically identical to previous forest maps, and you'll know that I make a conscious effort to keep it that way so that my maps continue to have a consistent look to them. Even so, I do try to make small changes to improve upon my established style. This time I worked on my trees which, I've been feeling lately, have looked too over-detailed in comparison to their environments. I didn't go all out on them quite yet, but I've begun reworking the trees to be slightly more simple, with a little more extra space within the bigger trees' outlines. I like how it turned out, I don't think they lost anything important, so I'll continue down this road a little further and see how it goes.

3. My focus for this map's coloring was to imitate Forest Outcrop's lighting/shading and improve on it. While I really like how F.O. turned out, sometimes I get a little carried away and overdo the gradient of bright in the center to shady around the edges, which gives the feeling of being very washed out. This time I was much more conscious of that, keeping the colors vibrant without over-lighting the center, dropping a lot of the darkness around the border beneath the trees' layers, erasing much of the darkness to aid in the rock walls' lighting, and it really came out looking great. In fact I like it so much I think I'll be using this one as reference for my forested maps in the future!