Today’s devlog is a quick look at the process for making one of Libra’s rooms into a map! Libra is an avid reader, so several of his walls are lined with bookshelves.
For this room in particular I took his house background and transformed it into a place to walk around. So, let’s look at the background.
There’s a lot of books here, so let’s sketch the place quickly! I added some extra details that are out of frame to make the place look somewhat more lived in, namely the alcove to the right and the extra recliner on the rug. And just remember, this is just one room of many in his house.
You can see a grid overlayed on the image. This is to help me with placing items since the map is on a grid ingame. Kotachi is standing about how he would in Asterism on this map, so this gives me a quick reference on if I need to move furniture so as to make it easier for him to walk.
After the sketch I lined it and started coloring. I forgot to save the preview of just the lineart, sorry! Once I did the floor and wall flats, I started on the books. I knew it’d look a lot better the closer they were to the background, but it also meant a lot of pain staking work… aka, the books took a very boring half hour to finish.
A little side note: I use Kotachi to make sure the furniture is mostly to scale on maps.
After that I finished the rest of the flats! It went smoothly from there. However, it’s time to say bye to Kotachi for now.
Shading indoor maps is pretty easy, at least with the art style for Asterism. I typically use a marker tool in Paint Tool SAI and then a multiple gradient to add not as harsh shadows.
Add a few light affects and it’s done (for now)! Quite frequently I’ll go back over art pieces after finishing them to touch up some things, but for now it’s finished.
Now there’s just 30 more images just like this to finish! Hah… ha….
— Arimia
