How to Make Customized Hex Tiles!

in this video I'm going to show you how to make hexagon map tiles in my last video I made the map for my new RPG campaign it's going to be a hex crawl through an old school Nintendo RPG inspired world and when I was done with the map I thought it would be so cool to lay down each hex on the table as my players explored slowly revealing the world to them as we played so I did some very quick research and found these three inch wooden hex tiles I guess these are pretty standard thing in the crafting world so if you have a craft or art supply store near you maybe they'll have them if not I'll have a link down in the description so yeah I'm going to be using one of my favorite art tools pasta markers to draw on these hextiles poskas are paint pins so they lay down nice opaque color on pretty much anything including these wooden tiles if you don't have pasta pins don't worry I'll show you an easy way to get your drawings onto these wooden hex tiles towards the end of the video okay so I'm starting off my process just by laying down a flat color blue for water green for planes and Forest yellow for the desert and gray for mountains these wood blocks are absorbing the pasta paint really well but you could totally use craft paint to do this part of the job just as easily and already just by adding one color these tiles feel pretty cool to me there's something really awesome about having tactile game pieces a map can go such a long way in getting your players excited to explore but I have a feeling these big three-inch hexes would be even more exciting to throw down on the table okay in the last video I used my making Maps guidebook to draw out the details on the map and I think I'm going to do the same for these tiles if you're intimidated by drawing don't be I always say if you can write the alphabet you can draw everything thing that I'm making in this video if you still feel like you need a little bit of help or want a step-by-step guide check out my flick silver pins guide to making Maps it's got all my tips and tricks to drawing fantasy maps and it's available in my online Shop link in the description okay thank you for indulging in my advertising now I'm gonna start really really simple I'm using a PC one Mr posca pen it's the really fine line posca pin and I love drawing with this thing so much so here I'm just making three little dashes for grass little dots for the desert and some swooping waves for water just by adding this little bit it goes a long long way to making these feel really clearly like field and desert and water tiles and at this point I can definitely see myself going crazy making a ton of these things for the mountains I'm gonna get a little little more complicated but not too much basically I'm just overlapping upside down v's and I'm trying to keep the actual drawing in the center of the tile too I think that way it looks a little more like an icon like a representation of mountains more than if I spent a bunch of time trying to connect things and have each tile blend into each other I'm adding Shadow to one side of the mountain just to give it some depth because these are three inch tiles and not one inch like on the paper map it's fun to add a little more detail to the drawing for the forest I'm going to add some more color too so some darker green triangles for the leaves of the pine trees and little brown trunks the cool thing about pasta markers is that you can layer colors really easily once the color is nice and dry another color can go right on top you just have to remember to shake the PIN to make sure that the paint comes out nice and opaque okay so I'm going over the trees with an outline just to make everything feel cohesive from tile to tile if I make more tiles in the future I might make the trees a little smaller and a little denser to make the tile really feel like a forest okay next up I'm making an oasis in the desert I think it would be really really cool to have like 10 desert tiles and then make this one Oasis town that gets pulled out randomly as the players are exploring their way across the desert I'm not being too too precious about the drawing on these just kind of eyeballing as I go but if you want to be a little more careful and plan things out a little bit more you can always use a pencil first and then draw over top of it with the pasta pins and now that I've drawn this Oasis it's making me want to get more detailed with some of the other tiles I think a big castle should be at least one of the tiles in every hex set right now the drawing is getting a little more involved at this point but it's still just basic shapes it's little zigzags for the battlements triangles for the tower roofs and an arch with three lines for the gate I've thought ahead and filled in the color first but again if you need to start with a pencil that works just as well and now I just can't help myself I want to add little details to all of these tiles a volcano and a pirate ship seem cool maybe a little Goblin dungeon in a field and a Dwarven mine in the mountains maybe there's a druid portal in the middle of the forest if I was making a full collection to use in a bunch of different games I probably make more standard generic titles and not so many of these special ones but if I was just planning on using these tiles for one particular game I might get even more specific if I know exactly what the players are gonna find in each hex it would be a lot of fun to customize each individual piece with some interesting location okay if you don't have any paint pens but you still want to make some awesome hex tiles let me show you how to do that so I've grabbed a scrap sheet of Bristol board it's like thicker pressed paper meant for drawing but any thick paper you have will work just fine I'm going to trace a hex onto the paper as a template just using the wooden tile so I know where to draw and then I'm jumping straight into the drawing I'm going to make a little wizard tower in the middle of a forest and for this part you can use whatever tools you want colored pencil fine liner pens like I'm using here or you could even fully paint your hexes experimenting with different art tools is one of my favorite things to do I love drawing in black and white with Micron pens or using colorful paint markers or even working digitally you could print out a ton of different tiles if you wanted to and once I've got the drawing all done I'm going to roughly cut out along the outside of the hex being sure to leave a little bit of extra space and then I'm gonna use some rubber cement to stick it to the wooden tile maybe there's a better glue to use but rubber cement is for sticking two pieces of paper so I think this should work actually now that I'm thinking about it that paper is just wood too right so sticking a piece of paper to this little wooden tile is gonna work just fine okay the trick to using rubber cement properly is you don't just glue on the back of the paper and stick you got to spread the glue evenly on the paper and evenly on the wooden tile then you let both dry it's counterintuitive to all other types of gluing but trust me if you want to stick this piece of paper to this wooden tile you got to let both of them dry then line up your piece of paper with the drawing on it with the wooden tile and stick them together just be careful once they are stuck they'll be stuck I left a little bit of extra space on the edge so I could flip the tile over and cut off the excess be careful when cutting with an exacto I've sliced my fingers way too many times and it's not fun if you angle the blade out a little bit and use the tile as a guide you'll get a nice clean cut and that's all there is to it pretty awesome little hex style if you ask me so yeah let me know what you think of these wooden hex tiles down in the comments I think they turned out pretty cool and I'm definitely excited to make a bunch more for my upcoming campaign if you're interested in this tabletop version of an old school NES RPG definitely check out my patreon I'll be releasing the adventure as zines and PDFs over the next few months it's a great way to support the channel and get access to a bunch of other Adventures Plus guidebooks like Fox silver pins got to making maps and be sure to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already I got lots more exciting videos coming out every week thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one see ya [Music]

Channel: JP Coovert

Views: 18,309

Keywords: hex tile, hexagon, game piece, jp coovert, customize, board game tile, drawing tutorial, drawing tutorial easy, dnd campaigns, world building, dungeons and dragons, world map, map making, dungeons & dragons, fantasy maps, game master, fantasy cartography, d&d map, fantasy map making, fantasy map drawing, dungeon master, map drawing, rpg map, world building dnd, worldbuilding, how to, draw your dnd world

Id: Ff-Z1sY_kqQ

Length: 8min 57sec (537 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023