Work in Process

 How Do Art?

They came out of the darkness above. Our only warning was a soft thrum of bristly wings. Sickly blue skin shone in the wormjar light as one alighted on Tobby’s chest, driving its thorny legs into his armor. A yellow mist burst from the thing’s underside, splattering his face. He stumbled back, shrieking and flailing. Before I could get to him, the Cleaner’s fluttering mouthbrushes had scrubbed the melting flesh from his face. Our only hope was to run. There was nothing to be done for Tobby.

-unknown-

Hey folks, thanks for stopping by! I am still catching up here, but I am pleased to tell you that I have completed Week 32 of the #dungeon23 challenge, and am less than a week behind overall. Other things in life and work have been taking up a lot of my energy lately and I don’t have any deep thoughts about RPG design today. I do want to start sharing more art. Most of these sketches I’ve been sharing are just little doodles and colored pencil studies. Sketches are easy and loose. I don’t care if they are good. I have a much different relationship with completed work, especially for publication, and that can be a real struggle at times. Here’s a bit more about my current process for creating FINISHED ART.

In this instance, I was tasked to create a dungeon entrance in a hexagon for The Demon Lord Expansion for Twelve Years by Max Moon Games. I’ve done a few of these hex illustrations now and I enjoy the freedom and space they give me to work.

The first step is always composition and design. Thumbnails. Dozens of thumbnails. These are a few of the ideas I sent along to Max.

Hellmouth Hex Thumbnails

The two of us we will then identify design elements that make sense and, most importantly, look cool. This hex is meant to be a stone demon head at the back of a forgotten garden. A slightly more polished thumbnail, maybe larger, will be done to solidify the composition a little more. I always enjoy breaking the hexagon border with fiddly bits and I was having fun with silly plants and the broken path.

Once we've agreed on a good direction for the final piece, I will start a full-size drawing. I’m new enough to this that I’m still playing around with the relationship between drawing size and final print size, especially for zines. I think I’m figuring out that bigger is better. In this case, I think I started at about 160%, or whatever made sense for laying out a regular hexagon by hand. I also did something a little different with this batch of drawings…I did a huge amount of the pencil work in blue. Here’s what that looks like in process. Things are still pretty rough at this point, I’m still working out details and solving the puzzle of this space.

I might write more about blue pencils later. I did quite a deep dive to find the right ones for me, and I have a drawer full of all different types at this point. After the blues are done, I can just do one “finishing” pass with graphite to really tighten things up and get all the values right. This is that, scanned. A bonus of this process is that I get a lot less graphite all over the place, as I am a sloppy draftsman. You can see the amount of erased blue and overall smudging that it takes for me to get this far.

You’d think that would be enough, but no, still gotta ink. The pencils are scanned, blue is removed, and the remaining lines are printed full size…in blue, of course. I’ve been inking printed blue lines for a while now, and it makes a huge difference. By the time I’m done with pencils, my paper is torn to bits. Inking on a fresh sheet of Bristol is a dream. Still, this is the part that I have the hardest time with. This is the final version for all to see, and it must be perfect in all ways! It isn’t, and I’m growing increasingly ok with that. I’ve got some different techniques to work on, and I need to practice drawing plants. Overall, I’m pleased with this one. Most importantly, I learned a lot. That’s what this whole thing is for, right? Getting paid is also nice.

Ok, that got long. How about some dungeon maps?

Week 15: Players further exploring Sanctuary will find this level a little drier…for now. The strange people that lurk here are very protective of their home and their worship. Few among them can explain the actual theology of these creatures, and they seem to practice out of instinct and ancestral fear. Whatever they believe, it does seem to give them power.

Week 16: I was struggling a little bit with a way to keep this level interesting from a cartographic angle, beyond the usual weird dungeon/weird creature tropes. This goes back to my previous blog post about dungeon connections. So, what if different parts of this level are connected by a swift underwater river? It would provide sustenance for these people, and may be viewed as a divine gift in itself. But, what if it is also a deadly proving ground? Young warriors must pass this test to earn The Gift, and adventurers passing through this area may be challenged to a grueling race for survival.

Week 17: This spread format works a little better here than on the previous level. This bit in particular ties the rest of the level together by looping the river back on itself. Where does it start? Does it end? There are some fun and useful treasures to be found here if the PCs can navigate the river race safely. Previous dungeon levels may hold the means to do this. Satisfyingly, April 30th was a Sunday, so the month wraps itself up nicely on this page.

Week 18: And now for something completely different. What can you do to break up the monotony of a punishing, dark, wet megadungeon? Turn level 5 into a hexcrawl through a vast sprawling garden floating deep below the surface of the ocean. The Floating Gardens were always part of the plan, but never like this. The gardens surround the central shaft of the dungeon and mark a major transition to the lower half. I quickly realized this area will require a lot of extra work and some new procedures to think about, but I love how much it changes the feel of everything that has come before. It should make for a fun surprise when discovered.

This post has been converted from a previous Substack post and dated accordingly. Please let me know if it seems like something got lost or if you find any major formatting issues.

As always, thanks for reading! Please share and comment if you’d like. I’d love to hear your thoughts on art, process, and megadungeons.

Andy

Making Connections

Your network is your net worth

The water surrounding Farlo was always uncomfortably hot and acrid. If you got too close, your skin would start to boil. So, he cast his stone lessons down from that strange home atop his broken pillar and gazed benevolently on visitors. His life’s work was devoted to ceaselessly chiseling these cryptic tablets. Like most of The Lost, Farlo was once human, or something near enough to it. Possessed of lungs and gills, he could still survive Above, but he rarely ventured to the surface. His legs no longer functioned, though his twin tails worked just as well on land as at sea. Always willing to entertain the young with magic tricks and tall tales, he was beloved by the community, and was an old friend of Hungo’s.

- Tales of the Lost -

Look at that, two posts in a month! I am slowly getting caught up on this dungeon and that feels good. At this point though, I’m past the initial six month outline/superstructure I had envisioned. As expected, this will need to be redrawn, and I need to decide how the bottom half of the dungeon will be organized. I knew this would happen, of course. I’m reminding myself constantly that this is a rough draft and a writing and design exercise. I’ve just started to go back to Level 1 and trace all the room connections on a flowchart to help me keep track of this as I revise and annotate earlier sections. Seven rooms per page in my notebook is a good format for writing, but it makes keeping track of megadungeon connections tricky. I find it’s important to have multiple paths through each level and multiple ways to get to and from specific locations. This is especially true in a dungeon that is constantly shifting and changing. Some areas will only be accessible to PCs with special gear or abilities, shared knowledge, or permission from some faction or NPC. However, there should always be some way forward (or sideways or down, as is most often the case.) I won’t guarantee you can always go backwards. Here you can see my initial layout plan…loosely devised in the days before the daily challenge began, as well as all the connections on Level 1 and just a bit of Level 2. I like this flowchart/mindmap tool, and I think I need to do something similar for NPC and faction connections. Make sure to put a bold arrow between Hot Farlo and the wily bandit chief.

Okay, on to the weekly maps. Hopefully, the blogging will get caught up with the dungeon design in a few months. For now, you get four weeks!

Week 11: Back in March, I got bored with the planner format. As I think about all the RPG maps and books I love the most, I like things that are different. I like text in the margins, I like non-linear layouts and secret notes. I always like to throw tiny hidden details in my illustrations and maps. Embracing the roughness of this draft, I took a few weeks to experiment. The first one was not as effective as I’d like, but it’s definitely an idea I’d like to explore. Here we can see one portion of the underwater village of The Lost. Everything here should feel familiar in the way that an “RPG Village” operates, but also be visually and culturally alien.

 

Week 12: A better implementation of this format. I like the freedom it gives me to map. It still doesn’t really make sense with this notebook. One thing I’ve learned is how much I still just love a dotted grid the most. This section of the village is where one will find Hot Farlo and his dubious wisdoms. The image at the top of this post is just a sketch to keep me drawing, but it’s also one of the first times I’ve put much thought into one of the dungeon’s NPCs. It’s a good start, I don’t like his face, but it’s got me thinking a lot more about what exactly his deal is. This section also features a couple of strange dungeon phenomena and a giant fish skeleton

Week 13: The last bit of this level extends out into open ocean. (Note: I guess this is the first time that becomes possible, and will be a major revelation to the PCs.) Although it is protected by a physical barrier, it is not uncommon for hungry predators to get into the village and cause trouble. An ancient lifeform of strange origin tends a garden of worlds, and a strong current will carry you on a one way journey to Level 5: The Floating Gardens. There’s so much to describe here in such limited words. I have a long list of illustrations and handouts to help visualize the space when I revisit this. The beginning of April brings a new, more traditional dungeon layout, with plenty of secrets and traps, and a new type of enemy, deadly and devout.

Week 14: Digging into April for real. Tangled waterways give way to an intriguing series of rooms above the water level. A swiftly flowing underground river loops through the whole area, and surprises may appear suddenly if care is not taken. Plenty of hazards, both natural and handmade. More hints of advanced technology and superior intelligence are apparent here. Looking back, I find this section less appealing visually. For the sake of the writing process and keeping things moving, I still haven’t settled on a distinct dungeon “style.” Even when doing paid map work, I change it up from project to project, and that keeps things interesting. This project may be too large to give the level of detail I like to put into a map normally, so I’m not sure yet how the final version will look.

This post has been converted from a previous Substack post and dated accordingly. Please let me know if it seems like something got lost or if you find any major formatting issues

That’s all for now, I hope to have more for you in a couple weeks. As always, please share and subscribe if you’re into that! Questions and comments are welcome.

Andy