Stormy Village Docks, Adept & Expert (Patreon)

Hello Adepts/Experts! This week's alternate version is another stormy map, though I think I had a pretty good reason this time. Remember Village Square? I wanted to make this map to look similar enough to Village Square so that they can arguably be parts of the same little village, and the alternate version I made for that map was also stormy, so this way the two maps lead into each other with their alternate versions as well! That's my reasoning at least, though I still think stormy alt maps are a little boring. 

Anyway, let's talk about the map!

1. So, seeing as this map is the 'Village' Docks and not the 'City' docks, I wanted the setting to be more of a oceanside fishing village than a bustling city. There are so many big city dock maps and so few of these small ramshackle docks that I knew that was where I would want to take it, so I made sure that the docks themselves had an aged and somewhat neglected look, like they've been there for 30 years without much maintenance and are starting to fall apart.

Like I mentioned in the intro, I also wanted to make the map mesh with my previous Village map, the Village Square. Fortunately, the aesthetic of the village works really well with the falling apart docks, giving the map a sorta 'old world' vibe that I'm really enjoying. I think this design just feels good, I don't know what else to say haha.

2. The outlines for this map would have been a lot easier if I wasn't dead-set on shooting myself in the foot. I'd poisoned the well of old buildings I had drawn previously by combining all their outlines with their colors, making them unusable; I had drawn my only other boats at too low a resolution to be useful; misclicked so badly while drawing the docks that my computer crashed and I lost 3 hours of work. So, most of this map is drawn fresh and I nearly didn't have enough time to even make a map this week.

3. But good thing I did end up making this map, because I do think it came out looking very pretty and very quaint. The colors are tried and true- who doesn't like vibrant and bright colors along an oceanside setting? I think my only misgiving about this map is the docks, which still don't feel quite right to me. If I hadn't lost my first iteration of the docks to a crash, I think I wouldn't have drawn the second try so quickly and haphazardly in order to make up the time. Perhaps I'd make the planks fit less well together, leaving crooked planks here and there with gaps into the water below, or maybe I'd add more props? I'm not sure what exactly I don't like about it, but a 3rd pass would probably fix it.