I just released the Cosmic Horror Phased Battle Map last weekend, and I wanted to share some of the process I go through when creating one of these maps. Phased maps have a higher level of difficulty, which is why I usually only release 4 variations of them, instead of about 12 for my static maps.
Let’s start from the beginning. I usually create the base map first, this would normally be considered a static map. All of the usual challenges need to be overcome here, just as with any map - make sure that the map itself has a good layout, that there are different areas where a battle can take place, the colors and the light need to reflect the theme and the mood of the map, and the composition needs to make sense artistically as well.
With this particular one, I actually had to change the layout several times. The first couple of layouts were very round, and it just wasn’t working for the way I wanted it to look, so I changed the platforms to be a bit more angular. Sharp corners that change directions seemed to make more sense for an alien, dark world where this takes place.
Then I did all the shapes, the large chunks of shading, and then started working on the details. Once the right half of the map was done, I just copied, flipped, and blended the seams. This process makes it a little easier to make a large map that also has phases.
Once the base map was done, I then started working on phases. Every phase has a different set of tentacles. I specifically did not want to repeat any of the ones I already created, because I wanted to make sure the phase transition is very noticeable. So every tentacle you see, was painted as its own singular piece.
Then came time for variations. I thought it would be cool to have a giant hand reach out from the portal, and smash the scene in various places. Big thanks to my husband for lending me his arm for modeling purposes!
Here you see yet another difficulty in creating phased maps - I had to paint the same arm 4 different times - from different angles and in different positions. The phase where you see only the fingers emerge from the portal - I actually painted the whole hand, but decided that just the tips of the fingers looked better.
Every phase of the map is essentially a variation, so even though technically, this map has only 4 variations, there are actually 52 files that come with this release at the highest tier!
You can download this map for free here (the hand variation and some of the other ones are for my Patrons only though): https://www.patreon.com/posts/cosmic-horror-86157375