WIP Inside a giant tree
EdE
🖼️ 22 images Surveyor
Anyone have any suggestions for a better fill for the "walls" of this small dungeon? I am trying to make it look like the inside of a giant tree. I could add lots of age rings, there are some very faint ones on the right above the webfilled room, but just wondering if there might be a better option?
Thank you and Happy New Year
Comments
Hello Ede :)
Looks like a good start.
I think you might be right about the age rings. I might also try to make the wood and the rings a more woody colour, possibly using the new Colorize sheet effect.
Assuming the tunnels and caves have been burrowed into the tree, you might want to start with a blank sheet and draw the tree-rings onto that first (and maybe add the current outer bark layer as well, to fix the tree's size), so it doesn't look as if the rings have somehow retrospectively fitted themselves around what would have been nonexistent internal features when they were laid-down. (As drawn, the web and misty (?) caves would have been in the air outside the original tree when the rings were being laid-down, which would have been tricky at least, I'd suggest!)
Cool idea! You could have the tunnel more of a sprial that winds into the heart of the tree and have the age rings around it.
Larger spots of dead rot along the way for rooms and natural connections to the next set of inner rings/gloomier tunnels. Maybe something like this (the reddish lines are the age rings, the larger circles are the dead rot rooms)...
I'd also make parts of the tunnel really narrow (like you have to turn sideways to squeeze through). If this is for RP or a story, it would create natural choke points for your players/characters that would amp up the claustrophobia...
Thank you all.
Sue, I am playing with the colorize effect but you are right, this is more clay than wood. Never found anything I really liked but the colorize effect is going to be a favorite
Wyvern, very interesting idea, my thought was a dryad formed the tunnels, which would entail a nature "growth" as opposed to tunneling which would damage the tree & thus the dryad. In conjuction with jonas' spiral inward idea I think it might work really well. The green carpet is an attempt to convey a slimey moss covering, the whitish pustule in the upper right room is intended to be a coccon.
Jonasgreenfeather, great idea. Spiralling to the heart of the tree makes for a better layout & more in line with the story. I like the pinch point idea in the passages as well. The party is going to have small, biting spiders crawling all over them once they pass the web room, and slimey moss actively grasping at their feet, it will be help to amp up the tension too... and then there's the wood golems...
If you're going for a more natural growth look, it may be better to use smoother lines for the tunnels and caves. The fractal edges right now is what made me assume they'd been tunneled in.
And don't forget the third dimension - no reason that couldn't be an ascending, or descending (or both in different places), spiral, rather than one on a more or less single horizontal plane.
Good advice Wyvern, thank you. I appreciate the feedback about your interpretation of the map, it helps me understand how to approach making a map that does convey what I am trying to communicate.
Cheers
I took some time off from this map to consider the feedback and start over. Version 2 WIP gets closer to the image in my brain. Still need to figure out what to do about tree rings but making some headway at least.
Feedback is always welcome...