I have written 2 blog posts featuring a total of 20 mazes that I abandoned for one reason or another. You can read them here:

Why I abandoned these 10 mazes - Mistakes in Maze making

10 More Abandoned Mazes - Mistakes in Maze Making

I took the time to evaluate the mazes and see why they did not work and try to determine - could they be salvaged ? Today I present my 3rd case study for improving one of those mazes, Red Rocks Amphitheatre. If you want to read the previous 3 case studies:

Case Study#1 - How to Improve a Bad Maze - Tiki Totem Maze

Case Study#2 - How to Improve a Bad Maze - Danzante Conchero Chichimeca Maze

Back to this maze. Here is what I wrote about the maze in the previous post on why it was abandoned:

“Abandoned Maze #5 - Red Rocks Amphitheatre Maze

Never completed. I never made the maze…just the picture which I struggled with in terms of coloration - every photo of RR has different lighting so the colors are difficult. And most of all, the maze was going to be placed in the rocks but that is a bad structure to make a maze in. Mistake made: Poor subject matter for a maze”

And let’s look at that maze, also known as the ‘before’. Notice there is no maze yet.

Now here are the changes I made to (hopefully) improve the maze:

1. Color - I changed some colors to be less cartoonish. Tree trunks brown from a mustard color (even if you can’t see them). Buildings that were mustard toned to browns. Seating area from a pink tone to more of a brownish tone.

2. Layering Fixed - This is somewhat minor, but there was a layering problem under the trees where the seating ends. In this area there are small concrete or stone shelves between the seating and the rockface. I fixed this issue to expose them as intended.

3. Seating changed - I changed the searing area to include more accurate seats vs. walking area.

4. Start and Finish change - The arrows are a distraction from the picture. It says this is a maze clearly but I changed this to an internal START and GOAL that is less distracting.

5. Maze addition - I went with freehand drawn internal walls within the exposed rockface. I did not want straight lines in the rockface.

6. Zoom Change - Now that the maze was on the rockface and that was the focus I zoomed in to feature that, losing some of the previous details in the stage area. I had thought it was important to show the entire stage but now I disagree with old me.

7. Letter and branding changes - Changed the sizing of the name of the maze and it’s location (floating int he sky before was terrible) and added my branding to the top right corner.

I also did some minor clean up of details in the maze.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Better. I considered changing every tree but decided against it. I think the zoom in and the color changes made a big difference.

And now the “After”. The new maze: