I'm very early in the game design process and nowhere close to needing final art. But since I'm the game designer and the artist, I want to build up the art style while I'm designing the game systems. To me, the mechanics and visuals are of equal importance. Below is a concept iteration on a basic "Mountain Pass" terrain tile.
1) rough pencil sketch
2) rough marker concept
3) digital draft 1
4) digital draft 2
5) digital draft 2 version b
In the third iteration, I've started tinkering with digital inking, coloring, and shading techniques. I've played around with overlaying a hex grid for movement. I've thrown in some text to get an idea of what's readable at this scale. I'm also playing around with visualizing a "road" system. Movement hexes transected by roads will be faster and cheaper to traverse. I'm currently deciding how much of the road art can be obfuscated by terrain features and still read as road hexes.
If last two versions I'm iterating, trying to fill the space and make the mountains feel more mountainous. Now I'm trying to decide if I should really push the level of stylization, draw the mountains twice as tall, make the roads twice as steep and winding, and maybe even tweak the colors, make the sun side glow. Or go with the current, more naturalistic, yet illustrated, approach...
All in all, I think this particular perspective is more appealing than straight top-down art. But we'll see. It's early. Anything can happen.
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