Who else does this???

[tmg]

I'm talking about your map sketches. I have so many!!! I've still got ones that are about 10 years old nearly and every time I look at them, I see so much potential in them being made into an awesome map one day.

I also see ways to improve them, like for instance making some of my old sketches - which are VERY horizontally orientated, into a more vertical layout, even if it means using 20 sheets of tracing paper, I would love to have more intracacy in design for all my maps because that's where wow factor lives - smooth intracate and interconnecting designs like that Small Pile of Gibs map we all love so much.

Just to be able to make a few maps like that would just be so good. So my question is...How many sketches do YOU have and how many are now in brushwork form?

[m]

Not me, but I wish I had that design element in my arsenal. If I did sketch something that made perfect sense on day 1, it certainly wouldn't on day 3.

I have three ways of designing;

1 - Start with a desired atmosphere and basic layout concept, build the first room with lighting and texture work all in place. Then I make the rest from there.

2 - I pick a texture set and mess around with it long enough for ideas to germinate. Then I slap some brushes together based on what I believe to work best.

3 - I use Nem's to make a terrain map based on an idea I have and then use the result as the basic "sketch" for the end product. I find that this is the easiest method for me to work with. See! I really wish I could sketch stuff out.

It's a lot of fun working from the designs and sketches that other people come up with, though I seldom get the chance to do so.

[Wixen1 [Q2C]]

Coming from an absolutely newbee...I don't know what I was doing back 5-7 years ago and it shows...
I think I just had some ideas in my head and would try it out...learning how to map, with a tutorial and an editor in another languese than my own...and I think it is easy to see how that turned out.
"Wixen 2", my first real map, took me forever to built and "wixen 3" was done in a few days maybe a week, do to some time limits at the time (contest). Some years after, I thought I would have time to map again and made some sketches, but did not have the time anyway, so it was burried, maybe I still have them somewhere..
I don't know which method is the best, but I think that if I am ever going to map again, I will make some sketches first.
-W1

[Deleted]

Map sketches...... too much ..

Also alot of brushwork in Quark..

[tmg]

Haha Margaal all those sketches. I should lay out all mine and take a pic, to see if I have more hehehe. It's good to at least sketch stuff out roughly first, even if it doesn't get into the game, then you can just look at it and be a bit narcacistic and revel in your own creative genius

I love it and it does no doubt provide something of a foundation to get creativity moving - more so than making things spontaniously off the top of your head - I find that a messy way to do things personally.

The one thing I'd like to do is make each map look on paper "fit" with the other maps it leads to, lay out wise, so they click together like a puzzle. Alot of my older sketches, the really drawn out ones, dont accomodate the next/previous maps very well, and I'm sick of big stretched maps.

On the same note creating a vertical map is a challenge as there are so many more variables to think of layout wise, but I really want to accomplish a really polished series of vertically orientated Quake 2 SP and DM maps.

But yeah for me, sketching first rocks .

[Hank]

I'm working on my first Quake 2 SP map.
I have no scanner, but it's sketched out in a piece of paper. All those triggers and func_ thingies, I would not be able to keep track of them just in my head.

[spirit]

I got many, but they are in the 3 different writing pads I use. I guess I got 5 to 10 times more sketches than finshed maps. Many of them have some cool elements/rooms in them and I have often reused parts of them in maps I built later. I like sketches because they allow me to think about mapping and work on a map when I don't have a computer. For example. when I have to listen to a boring lecture at university or when I'm on a train.

I uploaded some of them (only the ones for finished maps) to my website, btw:
spirit2dm5
spirit2dm7
spirit1dm2

[Panzer]

For me, it always started with rough sketches, which I then worked out onto grid paper. The Q2 rendering process prefers everything to be based on 8-base grids. Anything outside of that will absolutely kill your r_speeds, so my maps usually ended up on grid paper with each block in the grid representing 64 units. It also works best for texturing that way ;D

[j3st3r]

PPPPPPPPPPPPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZEEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Deleted]

My new sketch paper..

[j3st3r]

Do you chew on the bone while mapping?

[Deleted]

Dec 1, 2011 17:34:57 GMT -5 j3st3r said:

Do you chew on the bone while mapping?

These remainings bones are from my family Lol,
i did many hours mapping, had no time to gather food...

Pfff yeah...
at some mapping, compile moments i though about it ..

[WizardExt]

Hehe, you guys are wonderful. Creative minds, beautiful sketches. Awesome to browse through them all, keep it up!

I have tons of sketches around my apartment, but most of them will never see the daylight. Still fun to draw them and dream. Here is one I made:

wizq2dm4 sketch


wizq2dm4 screenshot

[tmg]

WizardExt your sketch is simple but very effective...mine are alot more complex in terms of making it look nice with gentle shading and all that pretty stuff...swear I'm ocd lol.