2016 Thank you elements in Old World Style

2016 continues to be a great year as we grow our digital worlds.  We of course want to say thank you to our fans by putting up more Thank you elements in PNG format. Just right click and save the image as for your free OWS elements! Enjoy

First, a little camping fun:

And some herd animal icons for cattle, sheep and horses for the world level.

We will be adding some more snowy hills like the ones below for use with OWS arctic and winter sets. 

For our Tower Descent fans, two versions of the tower, light and dark.

Coming Soon - Tower Descent

The latest collaborative effort with Dan Wolters, Tower Descent is a multi level map set ready to plug and play! The levels have largely been left unpopulated or not decorated, allowing GM's to decorate and design as they want.

Set 13 submitted!

Very excited as Scene Additions set 13: Maps Pit traps and Treefalls is submitted to the Roll20 marketplace.

This set encompasses grid numbers 1-5 on rows F, G and H. Grid map H4M is an underground map included for an overlay on H4 for an extra touch. As you may remember, 6-9 grid map pieces are all a part of set 12. Variations of G6 & G7 are found in Tent Bazaar (set 10), H6 & H7 variations are found in Wagon Merchants (set 9). And those of you who feel H9 seems familiar, try Keep Secrets...

Happy Mapping!

the next 15 sections

Working on the next fifteen sections, tying into the two separated areas on the map from last post.

You can see from the inserted thumbs, Grid sections F1-F5 are now ready, as well as G1-G3. Tying up the loose ends on G4 & 5, and the lake bed has now been created all the way around. 

I find it exciting to see the map fill continuously filling in like this! I hope you enjoy seeing it fill in as well over the next few months.

Continuing with some full color backgrounds

For those familiar with the Merchant Wagons and Tent Bazaar sets, you may have noticed there are variations of the maps. Have you noticed that the sections of map from one set align with the maps from the other set as well? So here's the plan:

A few weeks ago, when planning for the Scene Additions sets 9 & 10, I decided to start building a world. It is the reason there are variations of the maps included in the sets, and so that GM's could reuse the sets with different variations for different adventures. It's that whole bang for your buck, and and idea that I hope folks who purchase my work enjoy.  So above, as you can see, is a screen shot clip of a topo map I had created. Each grid piece represents a 20x20 square map on the 140x140 pixel ratio layout. 

Notice the maps from set 9 & 10? as well as Keep Secrets? yeah, they are being designed with the intent of expanding the usability (I hope) of the maps with a mix and match of variations. The lake is being redesigned with a couple new themes as well and will be included in set12:

Not sure how folks will respond to this, so if you have some feedback, that would be great. At present, I'm thinking somewhere between 10-16 map backgrounds with at least 3 variations (trees, no trees, wagon tracks and pristine). Each set like this will also include a separate element, building on past sets. For instance, I am designing some campgrounds for this set that can be put anywhere (within reason) on the maps, or used for other maps. 

Thoughts?

Some quick roads, enjoy!

Will recently asked for some roads for the world map view. So I thought I would make a quick set for everyone to enjoy! For use with Old World Style as roads for world view, or maybe a path of sorts for the regional level zoom.

Here you are Will!

(right click --->save image as ---> (put into the folder you want))

Tilesheets Available for Old World Style sets!

Attention Campers! (it's a good announcement :D)

Recently, I've been getting more requests on getting tilesheets for digital tiles sets people have purchased, or questions on how to create a tilesheet using digital tile sets already purchased. Some people like working with the individual tiles, others with tilesheets. With the rework of the marketplace, we are now able to attach tilesheets to sets, and I have been doing so with sets turned in after the GenCon seminar; and learning many make their maps off line and import the final pieces into the VTT editor.

Working alongside the folks at Roll20, they have allowed me to send in tilesheets of the OWS sets that did NOT have tilesheets previously and they have attached those to the set files now.

SO, if you've purchased Old World Style sets on Roll20, you should be able to re-download the set, and the new tilesheets will be in there as well! It may look like there is a lot more in the tilesheets, however you will notice numerous repeater tiles that I left in the sheets, but did not put in the separated tile sets for obvious reasons. They just look better for the flow of the sheet, so I left 'em in there.

Happy Mapping and Hoodalolly!

A link to my sets to make it easier to go back through: 

https://marketplace.roll20.net/browse/search?keywords=&sortby=popular&type=all&genre=all&author=Russ%20Hapke

Back to my roots

So, Old World Style set 12: Burials & Dig sites goes back to one of my roots: archaeology. Even though it's been nearly 16 years since going out into the field, it still remains a part of my heart. This set touches on the mystery and items that first peaked my interest.

With about twenty more design elements to go, here is a sneak peak at an earlier rendition using the pieces:

As you can see, set 12 will have dig sites and test pits, geoglyphs and menhir, buried statues and all sorts of fun stuff poking out of the soil. I am loving how the mountainside geoglyphs turned out, but reworked the land based ones. 

Playing with object layers

Continuing with some three minute tutorials in Tiled, we stay along our path using the Old World Style sets and this time play around with two object layers. You can see from the video just how easy it is to use Tiled to build your map bases, especially if you have tile sheets set up.  As always, I hope you enjoy!

-Russ

New premade maps and sets on the way

It's been a whirlwind month, with many things going on in the background while working on illustrations.  It started with just wanting to make some things for a simple wagon train. The wagon train evolved into a merchant wagon train; and from there I decided there needed to be tent merchants as well. As things progressed, it was more difficult to separate the sets so I made the choice to just keep expanding. The result:

Family things...

Sorry for the brief interruption of posts this week everyone, I had a family member that was rushed to the ICU and spent most of the week there. They are out, all is much better and things should be returning to normal here soon.

Thank you for your patience!

There are times...

...when you just cannot concentrate enough to create

...when you must push through those things in order to begin creating once again

...when inspiration comes once frustration settles down

It's been a tough week. We've all been there. It appears thought the storm clouds have now passed, and from some of the bleakest moments this past week, all of a sudden ideas just came flooding into the ol' brainpan.  I'm looking forward to this coming week to get them out onto the digital paper.


Oh, and a shout out to Joshua Kurz for his new blog. Click on the link in the left column there with the other artists and give him a shout out too!

Hoodalolly!

Throw pillows

For fun, in celebrating the latest Scene Additions set 8: Rugs, hides & Books, I decided to make a few thank you decorative items as freebies and will put them on here for folks to grab if they so choose.

First up: "Muthur" pillow...no self respecting orc cave doesn't have a commemorative pillow of when their mom said no to desert after the midnight raid and was met with three arrows to the heart.

Just right click as 'save image as' - Enjoy! 

--Russ

Rugs and Floor covering

I've always enjoyed drawing fabric - the folds, the way lights and darks meet and create triangular patterns. This latest scene additions set takes advantage of that fondness to create some rugs. So far, I've created close to 40 variations of runners, rugs, and animal hide floor covering.

Now mind you, it is yet to be seen how well this will be received, but it sure is fun making it.

Sneak peek: