Goblin Lair, Adept (Patreon)

This week I made the Goblin Lair (30x30), and your alternate version  is a shadowy Snowy recoloring! In addition to covering up the grass outside with a layer of snow, I also retouched the inside to have a more subdued and chillier palette with much heavier shadows. And, of course, it comes with a night version, so don't you even worry about it!

1. I never really know what to do when designing lairs and hideouts, it always feels like I'm forgetting a crucial aspect of it that makes the place livable. It's got beds, supplies, water, a guard post, and any extra locations for flavor, and that feels right, but I can't help but feel that I'm missing something.

Anyway, I set up this one to be a pretty typical twisting cave system, with a few dead ends, chambers with multiple entrances, and rooms that aren't accessible from the main hall. With those boxes checked, I think it feels semi-natural with just enough variety for a small dungeon crawl. 

2. I've had to draw a lot of rock walls recently, and I think it's time for me to take a break from them. This map was from the last poll, but next week I'll be drawing something of my choice, and you can be certain that any rock walls I include will have been taken from a previous map with barely any editing. My main issue with them is I can draw them incorrectly if I'm not paying attention, and they'll turn out looking too consistent like there's a pattern to the lines. My second issue is I end up rushing them and mess up my layers by putting outlines on a color layer and losing a half-hour of work. This has happened a lot recently, you'd think I'd learn. 

3. Tricky tricky. Two types of lighting make for a tricky job. Especially since my cave lighting is pretty extreme when compared to outdoor lighting, with tons of contrast and vibrancy pushed to 100 as I chase interesting colors. I think I got so caught up on balancing the two environments' lighting that I neglected to properly detail the ground inside, as it looks a little under-detailed to me in hindsight. Again, this is one of those little jobs that'll take an hour or two to tweak and won't be done for months, but it'll bug me until then.