Arid Boneyard, Adept (Patreon)

Hello again, Adepts! This week's map is the Arid Boneyard (25x25), another map packed with bones. As I've mentioned before, I've discovered during the lifetime of Neutral Party that I really enjoy drawing the bones of fantastical beasts, partially because there are really no rules to follow when you're just improvising on top of real skeletons. It's fun! 

Anyway, we'll chat about that more further down. Your alternate version of this map is Underwater! Here, I've added some fun effects which help make the map feel that there's a great amount of water between you and the subject, as well as a sweeping recoloring and lots of tints. I'm not sure if this kind of thing is what many of you are looking for, but there was a time where I continually received requests for underwater maps and it has really stuck with me. Hopefully a few of you requesters are still out there and appreciating this!

1. As you can see, the map started its life very different. I sketched this one out imagining it would be a nice addition to mountainous/desert maps, as well as a nice lead-in to some sort of cave adventure. Later, as with many of the maps I've posted over the last month, I decided that it should be highly focused around whichever subject I wanted to stress here, so I cut everything except for the skeleton. 

There's something to say for maps that are highly specialized. The map I had originally sketched would have been nice, and surely it would have been the perfect map for a handful of DMs this week, but no matter how cool the skeleton could have been it wouldn't have been useable for many DMs due to the addition of all the unessential landscape features. So, I cut out everything I felt wasn't necessary to the map and stuck with the essentials, just enough that it could be easily integrated into any desert campaign that needs a large skeleton in the desert (which is a nice trope I appreciate). 

2. I usually like to start off with wolf or goat skulls as a base when drawing skulls, since they look a little dangerous. This one looks like I used reference of a wolf skull, to start, but from there I made adjustments to make it look a little edgier. I do this so the creature that died here feels like it was something huge and terrifying. From there I just did whatever felt right- giant ribs/spines are necessary to get across the impression of a giant skeleton below the surface, some additional bones nearby for the sake of adding a few more on-theme props to the edges of the map.

3. I like to keep the colors pretty straightforward for desert maps- glaring light in the center with a nice fade to the edges. I like that this focuses in the eye and somehow feels warm at the same time. The bones' color was something I had to workshop a bit, I'm still not too sure about the choice I made. Maybe if I had backed off on the purplish shadows a little, but maybe I should have tinted the bones a little more yellowish? I don't know, but they certainly stand out nicely against the sand, so it could be worse.