Crumbling Throneroom, Adept & Expert (Patreon)

This week's map ended up being a little more tricky than I expected, but overall I think it came out pretty well! The idea for it came from my personal campaign I'm running where my players were exploring a long abandoned underground city of ghouls. The final confrontation was in the throneroom of the ghoul king, where his last subject was trying to bring him back to life. Anyway, let's talk about it! 

1. It's a very simple layout, but I often feel like the simple ones feel the most realistic. I put a little more effort into the rough sketch and added shading because I wasn't sure if I wanted to keep the 3D effect of the walls or just stick with the floor. After a while it didn't seem right without the walls, so I left them. 

2. Next up is the rough lines. I like to draw the centerpieces at this stage because I want them to feel natural in the environment, they are a seed for the rest of the map. I'll tell you what, I'm super happy with the pillars, I think they look awesome :)

 In college I majored in 3D modeling (Game Design (I don't recommend it)) and I ended up modeling a lot of ruins and caves, so maybe that will explain some of what you've been seeing.

3. Next are the detailed lines. In last week's BtS I mentioned how I was looking at different ways to draw rock faces, so you see here my first attempt at something different. Long story short, I don't much like what I did here. It's way too detailed, it confuses the eyes; I was hoping shading would fix it, but no dice. In general, I can expect that I see the worst parts of my art more than anyone else, so hopefully it isn't as much as an eyesore to you patrons as it is to me.

4. BOOM, color! Here's another map where I had a palette in mind that I couldn't wait to use. Not exactly as realistic as some might like, but I think it looks very cool :) The only thing I'm still not too sure of is the stone texture on the ground, it just bugs me slightly. Hopefully the pattern doesn't too obviously repeat (that's always a pet peeve of mine), but I didn't have the time to draw all unique patches. 

That's all I've got for you this week! The PSD is in the zip below, I've set this one up so that the columns and carpet can be removed without messing up anything (other than a couple lingering shadows), so go nuts!

Cheers!