Savannah Cave, Adept (Patreon)

Hello again, Adepts! This week's map is the Savannah Cave (35x35), and your alternate version of it includes a quaint little camp a safe distance away from the cave entrance (who knows what kind of nasty beasts might live in there? Lions? Goblins? Goblins with trained pet lions!?).  I've been considering how to continue to spice up my alternate map versions for you all, and I think it would be nice if I could whip up more versions with additional props, despite the additional time investment compared to color swaps or alternate weather effects. 

What do you think? What kind of alternate versions would you like to see in the future? I truly want to know, I don't want to be making content that you aren't interested in!

1. A little messy, but you get the idea. The sketch initially depicted a much more arid environment, featuring big patches of grass between spans of rock or dirt. I felt that this version would come across as very arid, which would have been fine if I wasn't trying to make a savannah map. From the inspiration pics I had collected, I felt that savannah biomes largely feature open plains with a few scattered trees and some rocky areas. Obviously that's a hugely simplified description of the biome but I'm an artist, not a scientist, and that's my takeaway after some googling.  

Anyway, I cut out most of the dirt in favor for wall-to-wall grass, which might feel a little overly plain or boring, but seems to be effective at depicting the environment I was aiming for. 

2. So here's my little secret- I drew 90% of the rock wall face a month ago when making the Forest Village. As I remember talking about in the Behind the Scenes post for that map, I didn't like how the rooftops looked when located near the rock wall as it felt like I was making a map with 2 different camera angles, so I just tucked away the rock wall asset and decided I'd make a map around it later. Well, this week I didn't feel like making another village map, so here we are!

It's a good thing I had already done a bit of work early too- I had some serious art block this week, so every bit of sketching was done under duress as I watched my self-imposed deadline draw nearer. Anyway, I got there eventually, and what should have been a pretty stinking simple map ended up taking a few days longer than usual, mostly due to me giving up entirely around 1 pm, multiple days in a row. 

Anywho, I drew new rocks! They're actually much easier to draw than I remember! I don't know why I was so reluctant to do this!

3. Colors! Since I have never made a map of this environment before, I tried to be somewhat true to the source material, taking inspiration directly from images of savannahs and savannah zones in video games (Far Cry 2, Conan Exiles, WoW). And, of course, I had to mess with the brightness and vibrancy a little, just to ensure that the finished product is colorful enough to fit in with the rest of my maps. 

The only thing I think I can critique here is I might have left the crumpled paper texture 20%  more opaque than I was intending, I'm not entirely sure how that slipped by me until now. It might have helped if I had tinted it a little more reddish too, but it's a tiny bit late now.