I return with a new map, the Craggy Shore (50x40)! I wish I could say that that week I just took off was relaxing and refreshing but actually it was for family reasons and that's not how I typically try to spend my rare weeks off. I did play some Pokemon Leaf Green though, so that was good and nostalgic. I completely forgot how crazy strong Mr. Mime and Vaporeon were in that game, very surprising. What was I talking about.
So I got a little tired of desert maps, which isn't surprising, and what better way to spice things up than with a colorful little tropical map? I currently don't have any ideas for the next one but I think I'll have to make at least one more before I'll let myself move on- I drew all these palm trees and now I have to get a little more mileage out of them to make it all feel worthwhile.
My thoughts, as they so often do, turned to Zelda again this week. Specifically BotW/TotK. I sometimes think about the beaches and shorelines in those games and how plain they were, they certainly weren't often packed with setpieces or anything like that, just regular ol' beaches with some rocks and palms. I respect that, very realistic. I felt like that was the sort of direction I wanted to go with a few tropical maps, for fun. I feel it's worth saying I don't feel past tropical maps are bad, but I don't feel like they were particularly great, a bit cluttered maybe and worth a redo for my sake.
Remember a couple weeks back when I said how much I hate drawing palm trees but I do it every time I need palm trees because I never like my old palm trees? Anyway, I drew a bunch of palm trees again. Thankfully I was able to reuse many of the other props, but that wasn't really the issue with this map, the issue was the stinkin' palms.
No, the problem with this map was the colors. I was using shots from Tears of the Kingdom as reference here and I liked the glowy, pale lighting I was looking at. That's all well and good except my brain is broken and if my maps aren't vibrant and eyecatching then I make myself think that no one will like it. So that means I ended up tweaking the colors back and forth between my typical colorful palette and the TotK palette, which honestly had me stuck for way longer than it should have.. like a day longer at least. This is why I want to make another tropical map before moving on, I need to take another crack at these colors before I can move on.