Sea Cliffs, Adept (Patreon)

Hello Adepts! This week's map is the Sea Cliffs (25x30), and in anticipation for the Volcanic Dungeon map I'll be making soon your extra variation is a volcanic reskin! I haven't made a lava map in a very long time, so this was a great way to get some practice in before I tackled the dungeon itself. I'm sure you'll find it useful for your party's adventures in the hells, and even if you don't then it will certainly pair up well with my next map!

1. Similar to last week's map, I started this one by keeping my time frame in mind- the holidays really threw a wrench in my schedule, enough so that I'll probably spend the next month trying to get back in the swing of things (look forward to the next Revisted post, hopefully only a couple weeks late (sorry)). I knew that if I tried the start a dungeon map the week of New Years then I would have to cut a lot of corners in order to release it in a reasonable amount of time, and that would be a shame because there's a lot of fun design space for a map like that. Instead, I went with something I knew I could whip up in the available time.

2. It's been so long since I'd made a ocean map that I had almost forgotten how I draw them. I know that I could very easily add more details to the water, like crashing waves and froth, but water is such a dynamic thing that it always feels weird to detail something in motion. I've done it a couple times in the past when necessary (for waterfalls or rapids), but even then it seemed a little odd but not as odd as it would have been without additional details. At the end of the day though, I think a blank slate is preferable to too much detail, because then at least the choice is up to the DM as to what exactly is going on there, tranquil waters or crashing waves. In my experience, nothing throws off players more than elements on a map that they're told to ignore.

3. Tropical colors, ahoy. The last island map I released was the Island Fort, but in reality that one was made a couple months before it was posted here, so I haven't actually made one in quite a while. The colors are, somehow, always trickier on tropical maps, and I'm not sure I can explain why. I think it's because I'm trying to capture the bright vibrancy that comes to mind without washing out the colors. This time I was a little more hands-on with the lighting, altering how much sunlight affected specific layers to ensure that the colors remained distinct. I've been doing this with my tree layers in recent maps in order to avoid them blending into the grass, but this time I also adjusted how much was striking the islands themselves as opposed to the water, which is fine getting washed out as the gradient effect is pleasing to the eye. At the end of the day, the grass still isn't quite right, but believe it or not this is the best result I came to. I doubt I'll revisit this one, but I learned some things that I can apply to future maps.