Schley inspired Dungeon style

[damonjynx]

Hey man. How's it going?

Hi right back at you. Things are going OK, could be better but every day you wake up is a good one, right?

So, I have been looking at his dungeon maps. and I feel the texture used is not as busy as yours, which is important I would say, since you want the eyes to focus on what is in the actual hallways and rooms.

100% agree. Need to make mine so it truly is a background and not so in your face. I think he has a stock of backgrounds that he uses, varying the colours here and there and flipping etc, this one of mine is a concrete texture straight off textures.com. I'll try reducing the opacity/fill, change the blending mode to overlay and put over a mottled grey or brown layer and see how that looks.

Secondly, on my journey with lighting and shading, I realised a significant thing, mostly that darker signifies a depression and lighter a protrusion. (Still, there are exceptions to this, but then you have to be bold with your shadows and highlights usage)

True again.

So, I feel that looking at a dungeon pic from a distance it would have to be from first glance what is the depression in the ground and what is sticking up. Which means that your texture looks like it is below the actual dungeon, whereas it actually needs to signify being above and the hallways are sunk into. My suggestion for this would be to add deeper Core(small dark) shadows and a bit longer Cast(more gentle) shadows, then touch up the ridges with highlights to make them pop out of the page.
All of this is quite fast changes one can make, but it has the effect.

To my eyes, I think what I've done looks about right when looking at the full size picture. I tried darker, slightly larger shadows on the dungeon "floor" and to me they looked too dark. Bearing in mind, these are done with layer effects and not hand painted. Perhaps, making the outer glow along the edges a fraction smaller would help? I'll try some things with this existing portion of floor-plan and see what I can come up with.

Below I have two examples, one is a Protrusion and the other goes down into the ground. One thing was for certain, the highlights was very important but also the Core and cast shadows.

Very nice and obvious which bits are above and below ground.

Hope this was useful feedback. I am looking forward to seeing you continue.

Absolutely it was helpful. It's always good to have other people comment on your work. Constructive criticism/feedback is always welcome.

Thanks for taking the time to look and comment! Appreciate it.