Bloodrock
Loopysue
ProFantasy 🖼️ 40 images Cartographer
Even though I'm already overloaded with projects, I decided to take part in the new Lite Challenge over at Cartographer's Guild.
(I've well and truly got the mapping bug).
The Challenge, in an excerpt of Bogie's words, was this:
"...make a map of the Underworld, whatever that means to you... so you could do a cave system, or a whole underground city, or a hollow earth type setting, or the sewer system under a city and what lives down there, or what ever your creative minds come up with..."
I had already been working on a new texture - a rocky texture that I wanted to use as a cliff formation, and staring at it so long gave rise to this back story:
Bloodrock is the name of a small Inferosian settlement at level zero - the closest level to the surface. Here the light that emanates from the core of the underworld is dimmest, and the stronger light is either from above, through the drains and skylights they have made for themselves, or from their own streetlights - powered by electricity they steal from the world of the giant humans that infest the surface of their planet.
The Inferosian civilisation is agrarian, in that the majority of their people work the mushroom fields, or fish the oceans of the deeper levels for the great white eyeless fish. There is a small army - sufficient to defend the realm from such monsters as rats, and a ruling class, who prefer to live up near the surface above everyone else, in places just like Bloodrock.
And started with this draft, which is basically just the texture with a couple of lighting effects and an experimental row of houses and a road:
[Image_6831]
Next I worked on framing the map as an underground situation, by creating one of those grilles of little glass squares to cover it - down through which we peer at Bloodrock (or what will become Bloodrock). There are two versions of this stage:
With the grille in place...
[Image_6832]
with the grille opened up...
[Image_6833]
(I've well and truly got the mapping bug).
The Challenge, in an excerpt of Bogie's words, was this:
"...make a map of the Underworld, whatever that means to you... so you could do a cave system, or a whole underground city, or a hollow earth type setting, or the sewer system under a city and what lives down there, or what ever your creative minds come up with..."
I had already been working on a new texture - a rocky texture that I wanted to use as a cliff formation, and staring at it so long gave rise to this back story:
Bloodrock is the name of a small Inferosian settlement at level zero - the closest level to the surface. Here the light that emanates from the core of the underworld is dimmest, and the stronger light is either from above, through the drains and skylights they have made for themselves, or from their own streetlights - powered by electricity they steal from the world of the giant humans that infest the surface of their planet.
The Inferosian civilisation is agrarian, in that the majority of their people work the mushroom fields, or fish the oceans of the deeper levels for the great white eyeless fish. There is a small army - sufficient to defend the realm from such monsters as rats, and a ruling class, who prefer to live up near the surface above everyone else, in places just like Bloodrock.
And started with this draft, which is basically just the texture with a couple of lighting effects and an experimental row of houses and a road:
[Image_6831]
Next I worked on framing the map as an underground situation, by creating one of those grilles of little glass squares to cover it - down through which we peer at Bloodrock (or what will become Bloodrock). There are two versions of this stage:
With the grille in place...
[Image_6832]
with the grille opened up...
[Image_6833]
Comments
A 2500x2500 version of this texture is available here
I've taken the lighting out because its really difficult working with it. Zoom in and the light disappears!
I'll put it back in when I've finished, although having no 'darkness below' lends it a very weird atmosphere that I kind of like
The texture doesn't look anything like this at full resolution. In fact none of it does. Here is a small extract so you can see what I mean.
I think there may still be some problems lurking in the background somewhere, since I'm still getting these strange interference patterns between the lights, and it doesn't seem to matter how many I use, or how narrow the beam.
Still. This is something I will probably have a few days to look at, since the rest of the map will only take about 3-4 more days now.
There are things I can do to make it better, but first I have to invent a forest of mushroom symbols to draw the eye.
Thanks for that, Jim
Can you spot the difference? (no prizes - sorry)
The important thing is - does it look any better?
I've also moved the entire land setting about 2/3 of a grid square higher up, but left the ocean where it was.
I also forgot to move the shadows from the old grid along the bottom drain wall, and they're completely missing on the right hand side. Rush job - just to get it put right by the end of the day.
Spotted the "uplands" had moved north a way, but wasn't paying much attention to the grid at all for some reason. I'm thinking the current version looks maybe a tad too much like a battlemap movement grid. For a drain-cover/skylight style framework, the strips look a little too thin and insubstantial. If this is on/set into the upper ground surface, it doesn't look as if it would support someone standing on it, for instance, which I think was part of your original outline intent (and even allowing for thick, but very transparent, glass between the frame squares).
Compositionally, the southern half seems to need a point or two of interest still to draw the eye more to me.
It wasn't so much a competition as a guessing game with Jim (and anyone else who just happened to be around), so nothing really missed
I know the grid is rather slender, but making the texture 'thicker in the vein', so to speak... yes, its a texture... would obscure too much of the map. Its a compromise. I'll have another look at it closer to the end, but for now there is a lot of other work to do.
The southern sectors are intentionally blank - I've a really big surprise to unveil... when I've finished drawing it, that is
I've been working on the colours, the lighting and getting the right balance in all HSL matters. That blue, blue ocean just HAD to go!!!
So here's where I'm at right now.
[Image_6849]
I have to separate them out from the texture and make a few symbols, but I think I need to work on it a bit more!
I have a few suggestions for your grid, in order to make it more part of the world (by the way, 5*5 is much better than 4*4, even if I did not spot the difference before being guided to it):
- It might project some shadow/reflection on the world below, especially on the water
- When a bar crosses another one, it might look like if it goes around the first one. Like if it was woven metal streams. This would not happen for a normal sewer grid, which is a plate with holes dug into it, but since you go to something thinner, it would make some sense I think...
- It might have a place to put a wrench to open it
- Alternatively, it might feature a padlock
I really like this picture (like all the maps you make...), it makes me think of fraggle rock!
I think I can manage a few shrivelled and browned ones that are past their best, and a few rounder baby ones... a few bracket fungi perhaps... depends on how much time I have left after I've done the rest of the structure
Those are some really good suggestions, and even though it would require that I actually draw the grid rather than use a texture, I will seriously consider them if I have time
What is this Fraggle Rock? I looked it up just briefly and discovered it was a muppet thing from way back when I was about 16 yrs old, but I don't remember seeing it. Maybe I was a bit too old to be quite as riveted to Fraggle Rock as I was to the Muppets
The main point was that the tiny men at the front of the picture with the helmets were busy building some nonsense tiny-skyscrapers all day long, while the bigger one just considered those like candy bars they spent their time eating. And your inferosians made me think of those little guys
The Inferosians were largely inspired by the Borrowers, who I first thought were a Terry Pratchett creation (but no, his very similar creation were the carpet people). The Borrowers were created by the English writer Mary Norton in 1952, and immortalised in various children's films all called (not surprisingly) "The Borrowers" in the 1980's and 90's. They're basically identical to us in every way, but just very much smaller - about Tom Thumb size - perhaps slightly bigger.
I have diverged from that idea by having my Inferosians make buildings and roads the same way that we would, with tiny bricks and spider web mortar, whereas the Borrowers themselves would probably improvise by making all these things out of 'borrowed' items, like shoebox houses, etc.
The lighting and textural zoning on the prototype mushrooms looks good. Maybe the odd one split more or less along a radius would add some extra variety? That may depend on their final sizes, however.
I'd guessed you'd have something planned for the southern half - mushroom fields seemed likely, and maybe some docks and fishing boats too - but you hadn't hinted beyond that earlier!
The effects in a complicated map are always a bit of a headache, but usually well worth the struggle
I've put a lot more detail into the southern area, and the whole map generally just by more or less finishing the road system. The spiral took forever to do (its on 6 different sheets) and it still has no support system or shadow. The worst of it is that after all that work I realise I have it all wrong - like an upside-down helter-skelter!
I have the feeling this map is going to be much more hard work than I was originally intending.
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/King_Ploobis
http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Land_of_Gorch
Quite fascinating... but is it true that none of you have ever heard of the Borrowers? No?
I'm busy trying to turn the conic spiral the right way up at the moment, but it doesn't look like I will finish it tonight. I also have an enormous number of houses and mushrooms to add to the scene, not to mention the harbour, and possibly (if I have time) the shape of a blind white sea serpent twisting around in the deeps...
Or...
I could forget the mushrooms (which are going to take a really huge amount of time to get right and not look like funny white stones all over the place), in order to have enough time to do everything else just right, and put a few red trees in instead?
What do you think?
Looking at the sizes of the buildings, could you get away with some textured mushroom fields instead, given that unless they're shed- to house-sized, individual mushroom caps probably aren't going to be that obvious from the map's vantage point? Will the fields have features like fence- or hedge-lines along their edges too? That might help distract from any minor imperfections in the crop texture, if time gets too pressing.
Red trees - vegetation generally for hedging as well, perhaps? - could create points of interest, as splashes of colour, certainly.
My goodness! Thank you Wyvern
The spiral is gone. If time were not so limited I would continue working on it until I was satisfied with it, but if I'm going to finish the map I'm going to have to lower my sights and compromise with a ramp.
This, however, has introduced a few new problems in the form of transparency acne, following the addition of a colour key to the relief shading sheet, which has me momentarily rather puzzled. Don't worry, though - I'll work it out
Update to follow in a couple of hours.
I've also attempted to add a bridge shadow, a spike of rock with a monastery on top of it, and experimented with a couple of trees (which I think are way too bright, but which were the only trees I had to hand at the time). All these new bits still require work, so this is even more of a draft than the last version.
The galvanised grate version is way too bright overall, I think, and the white grid is very distracting. The subsurface features now all seem flattened generally. I'm getting an impression that the mesa is actually a crater below the surface level, especially on its southern side, where the "odd" road ramp now is. Touch of the Eschers overall, with the northern mesa edge above the surface, the southern below it. Or maybe it's just me...
Monastery Rock seems to overlap the northern wing of the "L"-shaped building immediately below it very slightly; perhaps needs a slight tweak.
Trees look interesting. What sort of colouring were you thinking of for them?
One other thought. The main roads all have sweeping curves, but the narrower ones are mostly very rectilinear. That's making the minor roads look a little detached from the surface to my eye. On reflection though, I think that's because they're too close in colouring to the galvanised grate, so I'm not really treating the two as separate in places any longer.