Making Mazes - 5 years later - a comparison - Part 4

When I decided to continue making comic book style mazes I knew I might come back to this series. Previously I did a 3 part series where I compare mazes I made a few years ago to mazes of the same subject today. The full introduction is written in Part 1, but a tldr is I used to make a maze each day and now I make one each week so I can spend more time on each maze. I also have learned new techniques over time that improve the mazes (What I've Learned Making Mazes). Here is that initial series:

Making Mazes - 5 years later - a comparison - Part 1

Making Mazes - 5 years later - a comparison - Part 2

Making Mazes - 5 years later - a comparison - Part 3

Let’s compare 5 more mazes and see how much better the newest mazes are 5 years later.

Part 4 - More Animal Mazes

Walrus Maze

The initial maze is from August of 2020 and currently sits in the Animal Maze section of the website. The new maze is from 2025 and is comic book style with free drawn pathways. I actually like to 2020 version which was made for kids. If I went back and changed it I would use free drawn walls instead of a standard maze style with right angles. The 2025 version is on a comic book cover and so uses that style.

Snake Maze

The initial maze was made in July of 2019 and the illustration was made for kids. I used bright colors and an angled but structured pathways that I hoped would give the snake a scale-like look.

2025 is comic book style and a much more interesting illustration !

Pig Maze

I made 3 versions. February 2019 vs. August 2020 vs. 2025. The first version was for the year of the Pig and it illustrates a glaring design mistake. The illustration is for kids, but the maze is for adults. Either the maze should have been easier or I should have taken more time making the pig. The 2020 maze is much better and shows the full body of the pig. It still works today. It could be improved with better hand drawn pathways. 2025 is a comic book version of a pig and much better than the 2019 version !

Lemur Maze

In October 2019 I made the original Lemur Maze which was for kids. It works, but my 2025 comic style maze has a lot more character !

Raccoon Maze

October 2019 vs 2025. The initial maze was made for kids. The second is much harder and gives our Trash Panda a bit more personality !

I should have more of these in the future - comparing the old to the new, but expect to see less mazes of subjects I have already done for awhile; that means lots of new mazes ! Hopefully, I can replace some old mazes that were poorly done with new and improved versions ! Happy Mazing !

If you want to see all case studies this post pulls them together:

A Collection of Maze Design Case Studies to improve your Mazes

and this post if you like maze design:

What I've Learned Making Mazes

Maze Comic Book Cover #60 - Trash Panda

Issue #60 in my comic book cover series is called Trash Panda and features a new maze of a Raccoon. The background was made using starryai.

My comic book cover mazes can be found in 2 places:

Comic Book Cover Mazes - Year 1 (Issues #1-53)

Comic Book Cover Mazes - Year 2

Raccoon Maze Comic Book

To receive a book of my first year of comic book book mazes (Volume 1 with mazes #1-53) you can sign up for my book alerts - any time I launch a free maze book, or paid book (on Amazon), I will send you a note about the new book launch.

Maze of the Week 8 Redux - Abraham Lincoln Maze (MOTW#164)

Abraham Lincoln was a great President and I have made him into a maze 4 times ! One of those times became my maze of the week #8 that featured the statue of him that sits in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Today I attempt to improve upon that maze. It was a challenge, so let’s see what I did and see if I was successful. Here is the original post:

Maze of the Week #8 - Abraham Lincoln Maze

Here are the enhancements I made to improve the maze:

1. Changed the Pathway Width. Increased the size of the pathways by 50% to make solving easier. This is more apparent when printed to solve.

2. Re-colored the Maze. I changed the background color and statue color. Lighter brown tone for the wall and a brighter grey for the marble.

3. Start/Goal changes. I deleted the arrows and changed them to be the written out words START and GOAL.

4. Reoriented the Maze. I moved the maze to align with the bottom of the page. This also distanced the quote on the wall behind him above his head.

5. Shadows Added. I spent a lot of time working on shadows for this statue. This took up the majority of my time and it was tedious work. I also added some shadows to the back wall.

6. Branding Changes. I reduced the branding tag by 75% and pushed it into the shadows of the corner.

Let’s see the before and after:

After the changes I see a maze similar but different. Did it improve ? I’m not sure. Either seems ok to me.

Some data: The new file is 2910MB from 499MB.

I will be adding the new version of the maze as an option going forward.

If you like this type of content check out all of my case studies:

A Collection of Maze Design Case Studies to Improve your Mazes

Happy maze-ing !

Creating a complicated Weaving Maze - an updated method

I have previously written about how to make a weaving maze, then I updated the how to with an improved method that included the addition of a guideline. Today I want to share a specific weaving maze update that focuses on the actual pathway design. I believe this method leads to better maze pathway design and gives the maze maker more control on the difficultly level of the maze. Here are the original posts along with a Pipes Maze how-to which is a themed variation of a weaving maze.

How to Make a Weaving Path Maze

How to Make a Weaving Path Maze - Improved Method

How to Make a Pipes Maze

The example I am using comes from my work on an upcoming book and will most likely become my first book of Pipe Mazes, a follow-up to my Weaving Maze book available on Amazon. Each step will have an illustration. If you prefer, at the end of the post is a gallery where you can see all illustrations back to back and watch the maze be made !

Step 1 - Create a Grid in the Shape You Want to Use

No changes here to the method. I chose a backwards c type shape.

Pipe Maze Grid

Step 2 - Begin drawing The Maze

My start breaks into 4 different pathways. Pretty normal. As with any maze, the more pathways that are possible the more difficult the maze will be.

Pipe Maze Step 2

Step 3 - Break off each pathway into multiple sections

In my example I made it simple by breaking 4 pathways into 8 pathways branching each into 2 directions.

Pipe Maze Step 3

Step 4 - Color Code the Pathways

Here is the real new part of the method. Color code the paired branches so you can keep track of the solution/false pathways more easily. In my example I use 4 colors for the initial pathways as shown below.

Pipe Maze Step 4

The Theory - My weaving mazes do not have dead ends, rather loops that you need to backtrack out of. So, continue to design the maze as you normally would with one exception, when you end a pathway branch, it only ends by connecting with a like color branch. So, if a solver enters the green pathway, they are stuck in that pathway, looping around until they escape to another loop color. Of course one of the loops will contain the correct pathway. For this example 3 of the 4 colors get you stuck. The last color contains the correct pathway (but also some internal loops). Complicate the maze by creating more loops (possible pathways).

Let’s see this play out in this example. The following steps are what I took, but do not need to be followed strictly in any way, they merely break down the thought process I used when designing.

Step 5 - Complete the Blue Pathway

I made the blue pathway a long single loop. A solver will quickly realize that this is a bad direction and move to another option. I consider this an easy version of a bad pathway.

Pipe Maze Step 5

Step 6 - Complete the Aqua Pathway

Again, I decided to design a second bad pathway, but this branch includes some additional loops, so it will take the solver longer to determine they made a bad decision. However, I did this so there were only 4 pathways to take, so medium difficulty.

Pipe Maze Step 6

Step 7 - Complete the Yellow Pathway

So here I did the 3rd bad pathway, but made it very complicated. This is the pathway you do not want to take. It breaks into multiple pathways many times, all of which loop around on themselves. This is the difficult pathway.

Pipe Maze Step 7

Theory Break - From a design perspective I made each of the above pathways (each different color) a different difficulty level. Want to create an easier maze ? Use more Step 5 type blue pathways. Prefer a harder maze? Lots of Step 7 version pathways.

Step 8 - Refine your final color pathway

I now know the green pathways will contain the answer. I actually am not sure which one it will be until I get farther towards the end. So I break the green into 2 shades of green. Eventually one of these will lopp onto itself, while the other contains the solution.

Pipe Maze Step 8

Step 9 - Create the Goal

I used the color orange to designate the goal. I have done this so I can create some wrong pathways for solvers who try to solve the maze by starting at the goal. By creating the goal now, I also can plan the maze pathways better.

Pipe Maze Step 9

Step 10 - Create Goal Loops

For those back solvers. Not necessary, but the more you make the more complicated the maze will become (for back solvers). You are taking up space that could be used in the other direction however.

Pipe Maze Step 10

Step 11 - Continue creating the pathways

Pipe Maze Step 11

Step 12 - Finish the Maze

Eventually as the maze guide filled in I chose a dark green pathway to link to the orange path.

Pipe Maze Step 12

Step 13 - Recolor the pathways

Maze doesn’t look so easy now, does it ?

Pipe Maze Step 13

Step 14 - Make the Final Touches

Since I made this a Pipe Maze I add the details of the start and goal and also delete the guideline to create the final maze ! This is a good time to test the maze if you want also.

Create a pipe maze Step 14

Summary:

Use colored pathways for your weaving pathways to control the difficulty of your mazes. Create false pathways emanating from the goal to further complicate your maze.

Full Build Gallery: click to watch the maze build