Striving for hex-actitude

With my painting table even more covered in non-gaming stuff than usual (small matter of a leak from the roof through into our bedroom, requiring the moving of about a hundred and fifty books onto my desk but fortunately no long term damage other than slight discolouration of a ceiling I was going to repaint in the spring anyway), I've returned this evening to mapping Averaigne, my nascent Swords & Wizardry sandbox - see previous posts for details.

I wasn't entirely happy with how things were progressing, to the point where I was actually avoiding working on it, so took to the wilds of the interwebs for sage advice. I found a great philosophical discussion which made me rethink a bit how a semi-open environment in an RPG could or should work most effectively, which then led on to a very helpful 'how-to' post about creating a hex map from scratch. I already had the tools (the template for Illustrator and the map hex icons) but was coming at it rather ham-fistedly. Now I have a plan of action to follow. Obviously, with a large scale map already roughed out, the same level of random free-flowing creation isn't what I want but I think it will be helpful none-the-less.

Having digested, pondered, procrastinated and dawdled over the advice in the links already mentioned, I've just spent a rather mindless and therapeutic half an hour creating a new Layer for the Illustrator template I have which has the large scale 'atlas' hexes which sit over sets of the pre-existing 'sub-hexes', to use the terms from Welsh Piper's instructions.

Without further ado, then, taa-daaa! Some blank hexes!

Ok, not exciting. However, as I've gone to the trouble, if anyone wants a copy of my update to Thorfinn's original Adobe Illustrator CS template with the atlas hex layer included then drop me a comment and it's yours for the asking.

Happy geeking,
Rab