Sneak Peek - Werewolf Den (Behind the scenes)

Hey everyone! Normally I post one sneak peek a week but since I did not do a map release this week, I thought I would give you a super early access look at a future release; this one being the Werewolf Den. 

Normally when I do sneak peeks they are pretty near to being complete, however I thought some would like to take a look "under the hood" and see what it looks like in the early stages. 

For this werewolf den map, I wanted to work on the mouth of the cave first to help me visualize the den more when I work on the rest of the map. 

When I start a new map I do the following:

1. Read any / all source material from the module and any popular content creators out there. Make sure I understand the details involved. I also look at tons of reference material to get inspiration. In this case I looked at natural snow fall, rocks in snow, snowy cave entrances, etc. And lastly, I queue up some music and / or ambience. For this map I was listening to a blizzard and wolf howl ambience to set the mood.  

2. I do a rough (very rough..) sketch just to get a quick visualization. I have laughable hand writing, but it works for me. In the attached picture you can see my rough notes and things that I might want to add or call out. I also determine my grid size at this stage. 

3. On my map tool I always start with a black background. Probably habit from my Warhammer painting days when I always started off with black primer (until I discovered the joy of white primer and washes.. but that's a totally different topic!). 

4. With the grid on, I roughly draw white lines to map out walls and features. 

5. Once the white lines are in place, I start by building my outline. If I'm working on a building (or in this case a cave) map, I generally start with placing wall / cave assets to outline the work. In this case, I wanted to play around with getting the mouth how I saw it in my head and so I started "painting" with the texture tools. What you see in this sneak peek picture is about a dozen different textures to create the snow. Yes there is a snow texture, but I like to stack them with varying degrees of darkness and opacity to give that nature feel to the ground and then layer on shadows and different types of snow textures to give a weathered look. In this instance I wanted the snow in the mouth of the cave to look a bit more worn and choppy since there is a lot of foot traffic here. Whereas on the sides I wanted it to look more stacked and windswept. And of course the blood creates a stark contrast with the white snow which is more visually pleasing. 

So there you have it! A more in-depth behind the scenes look at my process. Hope you all found this interesting and I can't wait to get this one finished. 

Cheers,

DM Andy