 Welcome to MapCrow, the RPG art show. I am Kyle, and this video is brought to you by the Old Rode Zeen. Check out the description below to figure out how to get this very map in your collection for gaming. Today we're talking about how to draw people into your maps with details and composition. My friend recently pointed me in the direction of a wonderful and short little article by Austin Cleon. Austin is perhaps best known for his book Steel Like an Artist, which seems like something I really need to read and talk about here on the show. Austin talks about the centripetal book and the centrifugal book. That is to say books that pull you in and books that spin you out towards other books. Both of these are wonderful experiences to have while encountering art. Art that excites your curiosity and drives you, propels you to find more art like it is a really wonderful and fascinating bunny trail to follow. But I think for my maps, what I'm really trying to do is kind of this centripetal to draw people into the world is really what I'm trying to do with my maps. Now the first thing that I will do to draw people into the map is to come up with a little story. Some kind of striking feature that kind of generates more questions than it has answers. So for this map of the Blood Fens, I have Baba Yaga's chicken-footed hut kind of parked out over the waterfront with a couple of fishing lines just kind of lazily hanging out in the water. Now, why would a witch like Baba Yaga be fishing at this particular fishing hole, right? Well, it turns out there's a giant decomposing dragon skeleton with a beating heart that's kind of held aloft by these animate blood vessels, right? So maybe that has something to do with it. Now, what all this has to do with the quality of fishing or what effect this has on the ecosystem and why this would be valuable and or relaxing for the bone mother is it's kind of up to you, right? Like I have given you some pieces to put together some disparate details to kind of combine as you will. But I haven't really come to any set conclusions about the wider mysteries or wherefores of this situation. Another fun little story that I've buried down in the bottom right corner of this is at the top of this kind of dirt pile, there's a skeleton who is attempting to place a crown on its head and clambering up all sides of this dirt pile are other skeletons trying to struggle to also get the crown. And at the bottom of that, there is a slime monster that is kind of also crawling up this dirt mound to do something or other, maybe to get the crown or maybe just to knock all the skeletons off or eat them or some some them into its mass. Who knows within this slime monster, there are all these eyeballs. And if we follow the eyeballs all the way back over to the bottom left, we see that the eyeballs are kind of growing and falling off of this tree that itself is growing out of the dragon skull, right? So we have this kind of weird loop. We have this weird cycle. We have this struggle that's all of its kind of pushing the eye all the way around this cause and effect chain is actually moving the eye from one end of the map to the other. And then by the time you get to the tree, you kind of see the heart and then when you see the heart, you see the fishing lines and then we're back at Baba Yaga's hut. Nothing has been resolved. We have all these untidy ends, these loose ends, these hints at this story that is up to you and your gaming table to kind of conclude and flesh out if you will pardon the skeleton pun. All of these details, all these vignettes and stories are kind of leading the eye around the composition without actually resolving or explaining anything. And the general shape that they are making is the infinity symbol. Now this is going to be part of a two page spread for the zine. So I can't put anything super interesting in the exact middle, which is oftentimes like, you know, what more direct illustration would have you do. Just put the important thing in the middle, make sure people see it. But because A, this is a map and B, this is a double page spread, we have to kind of come up with something. In this case, the composition is actually helping to tell the story of this cycle. It's helping to tell the story and draw people in. One detail leads to the next, which has a mystery, which gets you curious, which has you looking for more evidence and so on and so on. Well, that's it for this episode. I will leave a link to Austin Cleon's article in the description below. And yeah, I fully expect to kind of follow up on some of his other writings as it applies to art and art making relatively soon. If you heard something that you thought was interesting or useful, leave me a like if you want to see more of these videos. Or if you have something that you want me to make a video on, subscribe and comment and ask a question. And maybe one day we'll meet on the old roads. Farewell.