There's room in the world for more hand-drawn dungeon tiles

[whump]

I thought I'd post my work in progress black and white hand-drawn dungeon tiles here to get some feedback and hopefully motivate me to keep going!

These are the first few I've done, some stone tiles, floorboards, stairs, walls, table and chairs, pits and chests. I've made all the different elements as brushes so I can just quickly paint them all together into maps for an RPG campaign. You can see here a few quick rooms at 100dpi (which is what I'll probably use as a 'screen resolution' for uploading to a VTT) and also a couple of the tiles at original 300dpi resolution.

Would be lovely to hear thoughts, ideas, feedback, criticism from anyone. Does everything look like you can tell what it is at low res (or at high res for that matter...)? Has anyone else had a go at this kind of thing before? How did it go?

Thanks for looking!

Quick & nasty dungeon:


Chest:


Spiked pit:

[Chashio]

Please keep going. These are excellent!

[SteffenBrand]

My brain hurts when I see this. Don't get me wrong, the drawings are excellent, really beautiful work! The issue I have is the loss of perspective on things like the walls. You got it with everything else, the chairs, the holes, etc. - but not the walls. I'd indicate it at least a bit. Sure, you have to do some work manually to get this in different maps and especially inner rooms are harder to get a possible solution, but I think it could enhance the immersion the map creates. If it's just for indication and used to make a more stylized map (as it is) it works though. =)

Reputation for you!

[Chick]

These are really nice, well-drawn. I agree, the perspective is top down, except the two pits look a bit off.

Top down perspective is a bit funny in some ways. Either you see everything as if you were above what you are looking at (like a god view), or you see things from a single point and only the thing you are exactly above has no angle perspective (like an airplane view). Your dungeon is the god view, and your pits are the airplane view.

Most maps use the god view, so if it is top down, then you see no perspective to things like walls, no matter where on the map you are looking.

That said, I also agree with SteffenBrand that your drawing is excellent and certainly conveys what you are trying to show

[whump]

Chashio, SteffenBrand and chick, thank you for the feedback!

I see what you mean about choosing either 'god' (nothing has perspective) or 'aeroplane' (everything has perspective) view and not mixing the two. I had a go at some 'aeroplane' style walls and, well they work I think. But it's very time consuming to do - I need nine different tiles for one wall set, to account for each possible perspective. Which means nine more for each wall set I do, plus nine versions of each archway, nine versions of each door... I will have to decide if it's worth it for my goal, which is to (relatively) quickly make acceptable-looking dungeons for my players.

Then there is the question of how to make things stand out when you can't use colour...!

Here is how the perspective view came out:

[Chick]

That's a beautiful job of perspective! I think we now understand why everyone uses the "god" view

[Azélor]

I like the style but in your last picture, the connection between the last door and the north wall doesn't look right. Though I admit that most maps do mix different perspectives all the time.

[Meshon]

Would it work to flip the doors around and have both sides? Like this, except more awesome? Pardon my liberties.

These are fantastic, really amazing style.

cheers,
Meshon

[whump]

Chick - thanks! Yes, the god view would be that much quicker to draw. Decisions, decisions...

Azelor - do you mean the leftmost door? If so then that is an error of mine, I used the wrong tile on the north wall there.

Meshon - I think that works nicely! Don't worry about using the image, I put it up here for exactly this sort of help

[SleepSigil]

This is fantastic, and your "quick and nasty" dungeon set looks as polished as my better work. Your style has good depth and detail to it, without being bogged down in extraneous decoration.