Rocky Clearing, Adept & Expert (Patreon)

Hey there everyone, this week you folks get a little bonus content as I've got two alternate versions for ya: alterless and with subdued colors! Sometimes the obvious choice for the alternate map (alterless) is a little too easy so I feel I should whip something else up as well, and honestly there's something wrong about a creepy alter in the woods if there isn't a somewhat spooky palette to accompany it. 

1. I had a little trouble making the layout for this one as I felt that I was making it a little too similar to several of my previous maps. The road and side path are reminiscent of Roadside Clearing and Forest Shack, the clearing is much like Ancient Altar, and my original design was way way too similar to Forest Ruins (which is why the altar isn't up on a hill). What this tells me is I might need to take a break on this series of roadside forest maps until I come up with some fresh layouts or inspiration for interesting set pieces. 

2. As this type of grassy and rocky map has quickly become my thing, I think there's fairly little to say about the outlines other than that I bumped my stroke size to 13 rather than 10 and I really like the difference, it gives me a little more room for using my pen's pressure sensitivity to full effect though I find I have to be much more careful about making small details stand out too much. 

Beyond that I decided to make fresh props for this one, as in recent weeks I'd come to reuse my old rocks and trees a little too often and I was starting to recognize specific rocks from my lineup (I took that as a sign). The rock walls, grass, dirt, and key props are all new, but that isn't to say that I wont use them at some point in the near future, such as in a token pack I've been working on.. 

3. If you've read a number of these Behind the Scenes posts you know step 3 is where I get into what I would do differently if I were to try to spruce the map up. This time, I think it's the vignette I dislike, the darkening around the edges of the frame. To make this map I used the Ancient Altar as reference, so as to keep them in a similar style, but I chased that goal a little too far I think. If I had the patience to alter it, render the different versions, and repack my .zips I think I'd make it so the vignette was ~30% lighter on top of just the trees (isolate them with the magic wand, set eraser to 30% opacity, erase in the vignette's layer). It would give some depth to the image while keeping the trees in the foreground. Maybe this weekend I'll have the gumption to make the changes, in which case I'll add an extra step after this showing the difference ;)