Village Creek, Adept (Patreon)

Hi again, Adepts! This week I made the Village Creek (35x35), a cozy new addition to my collection of Village maps. In particular, this one heavily features a little creek which cuts through town, offering some fun potential combat opportunities! It's easy to imagine dramatic confrontations on the village bridge, but maybe instead the village is being attacks from creatures that emerge from the water itself? I think there's lots of potential here!

Your alternate version of this map is one which I'm calling 'Swampy', starring the colors and lighting I usually reserve for swamp maps. It's interesting how the vibe of the map has changed with these new additions, though perhaps it doesn't feel like the village has been transported to a swamp- I think it simply feels more intense than before. Also, I feel like the swampy night version is a very significant change as well! Honestly, it almost feels like one of my 'Spooky' versions, that's how big the difference is from the regular night version. A nice bonus for you, I think!

1. As always when designing a new map, I need to start out by deciding what the primary features ought to be. For this one, I wanted there to be plenty of village to play around with, but only as much as a fairly large creek would allow for. That made things a little tricky, since I was getting dangerously close to having very little village at all in the frame, but using a slightly larger canvas than usual, 35x35" rather than 30x30", I got just enough space to imply a handful of extra buildings just off screen.

Also, I had planned on including a few more features with whatever space I had left- small farms and a sandy shoreline. I had felt that these two additions would add some flavor to the village and maybe help it feel more 'alive' than it would otherwise. The shoreline especially felt like a nice touch, implying a location for fishing/clothes washing for villagers.

2. Since I had drawn up some new trees last week, I felt pretty good about reusing several of them this time, especially since I've started feeling a little iffy about my previous batch of trees. However, I found that the batch I had whipped up was just a little short of filling out this map, so I ended up drawing a handful more small ones, for fun. Otherwise, the other significant new props included yet more thatch-roofed houses! I don't know why I am so willing to draw these roofs nowadays, I used to hate them- maybe my 2 1/2 month break did me some good after all? Anyway, I've been having a little fun with them as I try to find new ways to give each a few details to spice things up, like those little wooden crossbars (for structure, maybe? They look right, at least), and the small awnings that some have. I'm sure I can come up with some additional bits to add in the coming weeks that will make them even more interesting too.

The only other thing of note to talk about here is the rocks- I'm getting perilously close to trashing my entire stock of old rock props and starting over. They really don't look quite right to me anymore, somehow, and so they must go. Rocks are such a huge pain though, I never felt like I had found a good way to draw them consistently. I guess the time has come for me to settle that feeling once and for all.

3. Colors! I'm still playing around with the palette I had used for the Stone Circle, 3 weeks ago- a little more glowing and cheerful than before. I'm making iterations here and there still, like darkening the grass and trees, deepening the color of the dirt so it doesn't get quite so washed out with the lighting effects on top, and tweaking the color of the rocks/rock walls to be somewhat more brown than entirely gray.

In hindsight, all these changes will probably end up losing the heart of the Stone Circle palette, but still I feel like I'm making solid improvements somehow. We'll see what I end up with when I'm done with my current batch of Village maps, I suppose!