Behind the Scenes: Practicing Concept Art Maps (Patreon)

Today's post is a little different and goes into a bit of the behind the scene work that i've been doing recently to improve my battle map creation process! 

 I'm a little hesitant to show these off because they are so rough but.. I think its also worth it!  

In the images above you can see nearly twenty maps that have all been made quickly and roughly, trying to nail down form and colour rather than detail. Usually I will start out with a rough line sketch, then complete the line art and then move to colouring a map. This is a process that is pretty effective in making cool maps, but it's extremely slow. 

Instead these maps were made from the perspective of a concept artist, big brushes with large blocks of colour trying to work out form and shapes. Each map is not finished like this however, as each would need more time to work down and add detail and fix a few mistakes. There are tons of benefits to doing this kind of battlemap (like making really really big maps) but honestly it's something I'm very new at. The speed at which I make maps is always something weighing on my mind as well and this could be a solution to that!

I would need to practice A LOT more and create hundreds of these and then actually spend time detailing them but generally its something Im going to be doing in the background from now on.

Now I wasn't going to turn any of these into maps when I started the process but if you really like one of them, let me know and i'll redo things ;)