I did some sketching of Cosmo Canyon the other night. I was pretty excited at the idea and to make it my own when I actually put it up on my official map. I also got inspired after rewatching a FFVII Speed run and they had just passed Cosmo Canyon on the map and it got me thinking about how I wanted to put my own spin on it. Being viewed from the airship and seeing familiar parts on the map that you would see inside the village.
I first started out with what you saw in-game on the map and then I would go from there. During the speedrun when they entered Cosmo Canyon, I knew I really wanted to add the stairs that the party walks up on to get to the entrance to the village. Also, I imagine that this whole rock formation that we see on the map is what Cosmo Canyon sits on. It’s a big mountainous village with different levels of residences and shops fixed to the mountain side. I still want to add more details but learning from Mideel, it’s going to be small that sometimes the details don’t show up that well.
1st Attempt (pictured above)
On my 1st go at drawing out Cosmo Canyon, I actually had drawn the tallest rock formation that holds Bugenhagen’s observatory first. And of course after I inked this sketch, I had decided that I also wanted to have the Cosmo Candle. But in my reference picture Bugenhagen’s is more toward the right and more towards the center but not quite in-line with the Cosmo Candle. I also tried to draw the platforms and stairs the party uses to make it into the mountain and climb their way up to Bugenhagen’s. For a 1st try, not bad. I was still trying to figure it out in my head while referencing my in-game screenshots as well as online references.
2nd Attempt
I was pretty happy with this attempt. I felt better with the positioning of the Cosmo Candle being the center of the village and with Bugenhagen’s observatory behind it. You can see the straight yellow guidelines that I put in to help with positioning. I know there’s more details that I want to put in but I think this might be enough that when it’s on the map and you zoom in you can pin point certain parts of the village. I’ve been toying with the putting in more detail on the observatory, especially since the peak of the mountain is a little more filled out with more buildings attached as well as a little platform opposite of the giant telescope.
The coloring could be better but I the paper material is not ideal to use Prismacolor pencils on. It wasn’t blending as easy as it should. I think if there’s one thing I would want to change it would be to make the entrance and the stairs higher. It’s a pretty long staircase in the game. I probably could afford the height since there is only mountains around Cosmo Canyon and to the north is just empty fields and a river until you get to Nibelheim.
I had a lot of fun thinking this through and coloring it. It’s very rare that I pull out my Prismacolor pencils and just color something. I wish I had a better understanding on how to use them, I suppose I could watch tutorials on YouTube or something. I would like to draw a bigger version of this as a full-page drawing in my sketchbook just for fun. I was sketching on the next page on how I’m going to draw Bugenhagen’s. Do I draw it more like a simple asset or do it detailed and how you would see it as Cloud in the village? I definitely didn’t want to to be the same brown color as what you see as the simple in-game asset. Too much brown already in the surrounding area.