Chult's Extreme Home Make-overs: Zolkoré's Lair

ART

Nagalore, so far, has been great for me and my party. But I thought the crowning moment, the encounter with Zolkoré, was situated in a rather lackluster environment. Judging by the looks Zolkoré seems to live in a supply closet, rather than a dilapidated royal room. Also, that thing in the middle certainly does not look like a divan. So, I thought I'd give the room a little make-over.

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the result

So this is the end result. I kept some of the old parts while trying to add a lot of (mostly broken) furniture.

Let's do a little tour, shall we? Around the western door are two banners. Going clockwise, there is a broken table and two chairs, and two cabinets against the wall. North is a gilded bird cage. Two chamber screens now envelop a small area where the black orchid grows. In front of the chamber screen is a table with a smashed bust from Thiru-Taya, with the debris still on the ground. Within the enclosed area is a small table where Zolkoré mixes her medicines.
In the south east is mostly intact sofa with a small, clawed up table in front of it, and two non-specific plants behind it. South is a frayed and worn carpet. The coloured debris is from a broken stained-glass panel. Finally, in the center, Zolkoré got the divan she deserves. Around the divan are empty vials scattered about.

I used this little area to overlay the old one in my VTT. Feel free to do the same if you like it!

Posted Jan 10, 2021, 9:07 PM UTC

474
bolasthegodpharoh•

I like it!

5
ReddWind•

Very well done! I thought the same thing, my players sat on some crates to talk to her which felt... odd lol

2
Muffalo_Herder•

Love the design, particularly the rug. A couple pointers (if you aren't looking for critique, feel free to ignore):

  1. Fuzz the edges a bit. The hard pixel lines really stand out as layered on top.

  2. Many objects are a bit too detailed. In general, to match a style, you don't want any linework to be finer than the finest lines on the original image. With how much negative space there still is, many objects could be enlarged. Some assets may just need to be switched for a lower res version.

  3. Saturation is too strong, particularly on the sofa and birdcage. Nothing should be more saturated than the most saturated part of the original image, which would be the flowers here. Scheley's work is typically pretty low saturation. Golden birdcage also looks a bit plastic, real gold is more of a light bronze color rather than straight yellow.

None of this is meant to detract from the work you put in, the design really is great. I just care way too much about this stuff.

2
FunkyBotOP•

Yeah, you aren't wrong. Truth be told, I started out on the wrong scale. I just took the original picture and started drawing onto it. In hindsight I should have enlarged the picture first so I wouldn't have the granulated pixels. I tried fixing it with some layer blur, but that only got me so far.

The saturation was kind of a conscious decision, as I wanted the room to stand out - it is a royal chamber after all - but I might have taken it a bit too far.

Thanks for the feedback, it is totally appreciated!

2