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

When I started this website it focused on daily mazes. Each day for 3+ years during 2019-2021 I made a new maze for the home page, themed based on the date. Lots of celebration mazes for weird holidays. I also needed to make mazes quickly, so typically I would make 2-3 mazes a day. In 2022 I started making 1 maze a week. This allowed me to make more impressive mazes with more details. Here are some blog posts that pull themes together:

Lost and Found in Mexico: Exploring 6 Amazing Mazes of Mexico

9 Mazes of religious buildings from around the world

Detailed Mazes of 6 of the Most Famous Buildings in the World

I have also gotten better at using Inkscape, my preferred maze making tool. I was in the archive and noticed the difference in quality between similar mazes from a few years ago to today. Let’s compare a few and see how much better the newest mazes are. 2024 happens to be comic book style mazes…so you’ll see a lot of that.

I have re-made so many mazes that this will be a 3 part series !

Part 1 Animal Mazes then and now.

Bunny Maze

The initial maze is from September 28, 2019. It was made for kids to celebrate International Rabbit Day. The new maze is from 2024 and is comic book style to celebrate Easter.

Chicken Maze

The initial maze was made in 2020 for a section of the website on animal mazes for kids.

2024 is comic book style and celebrates World Farm Animals Day.

Cow Maze

Again we have a kids maze for the animal maze section from 2020 against a comic book style cow from 2024. Each has 2 versions.

Mule Maze

October 26, 2019 was National Mule Day. I really like the maze I made back then mostly because of the snout coloring ! And a 2024 comic book version.

Tiger Maze

My tiger maze from July 2019 is terrible. I hated it when I made it. I hate it even more now. But I need to own it. And the 2024 comic book style replacement.

So a few years later things have gotten much better! I hope you agree. In Part 2 I will be looking at some non-animal mazes vs 2024.

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

A Collection of Maze Design Case Studies to improve your Mazes

How Corn Mazes are Made - A Collection of Corn Maze Videos

It is October and that means we are on the road (Elm St.) to Halloween (How about some Halloween mazes?). That also means it is time for haunted houses - typically a type of labyrinth - think about it and also corn mazes. Let’s talk about corn mazes a bit. I spend a lot of time talking about what labyrinths you can visit around the US using the wonderful website Labyrinth locator. Well did you know there is also a website that features corn mazes ? The map can be found here on the mazeplay site. So, hopefully you can find a maze to visit near you !

Previously I went through my favorite labyrinth and maze videos (My Favorite Maze and Labyrinth Videos), and it included some really cool cats, a hamster and lots of information. I enjoyed it. But there was one thing that I didn’t cover in that post and that was Corn Mazes (or Maize Mazes). The reason ? Because there are a LOT of really fun videos to watch on the subject and I thought they needed their own post. This is that post.

My Favorite Corn Maze Videos

Let’s start with the back office look at how these get designed and made (or maybe more accurately plowed). But I love to see them being made ! Really amazing work. This video is of the Treinen Farm in Lodi, Wisconsin. You can plan a visit here and on their site I learned they had won an award as one of the 10 best corn mazes in the USA !

Here is a great story of a family farm with how they have used a corn maze to keep a farm in the family as an additional income stream. Located in Thurmont, Maryland at Lawyer’s Winterbrook Farm the farm also features 30 foot junkbots ! You can plan a trip here.

Here is a quick 3 minute conversation that speaks to how Maze Play uses GPS to cut a corn maze. This features a maze from Mark’s Melon Patch in Albany, Georgia. Their corn maze is open in October and November each year and you can plan a trip here or just visit to pick up some pumpkins !

And this shows some great aerial views of corn mazes that look like art ! Lots of variety and really interesting designs ! Features the work of landscape artist Will Sillin on Mike Wissemann's farm in Massachusetts.

And this is just a small sampling of what you can find about corn mazes on YouTube. Of course now your algorithm is changed and they will pop up for you automatically. Enjoy !! I find myself getting lost in this type of content and then it goes away for awhile….and then months later it is back !

a large difficult corn on the cob maze

A Corn Maze, but not the kind we are talking about today.

Want to boost your algorithm even more ? Check out these posts !

My YouTube channel where you can watch mazes being made.

7 Videos on Maze making

The 10 Most Famous Labyrinths from Around the World

Maze of the Week #144 - Chicken

Maze of the Week #144 is a Chicken maze to help celebrate World Farm Animals Day. What animal would you pick to represent farm animals ? I had already made a cow maze. Sheep, Goat and Pig were also in the running.

Here was my preview image.

Chicken shadow outline

Here is the first version of the maze. It feels like it could be a logo on the side of a bucket of fried chicken.

chicken maze

And the alternative color version.

Chicken Maze

Downloads are available in the comic book style maze section. Come back tomorrow to see what the comic book cover looks like !

Next weeks Maze Preview: Difficult to guess IMO

Maze Preview