A Maze A Week

When I was little, I learned that HI could be read as HI if turned 90 degrees.

travel from dot to dot on white paths

When I exported the ellipses and ribbons maze, I had the what background layer invisible, but didn’t notice for some reason. Here’s the maze as originally designed:

from dot to dot

Though the ribbons and parallel paths may look like they pass over and under each other, this maze is designed to be purely flat.

There’s a very simple way to solve it, and a more complex way to solve it.  Either way, the path does not cross any dark lines.

travel from dot to dot

Spoiler Inside	SelectShow
solved

jack> How about having the maze start point be on the upper left corner. 3 exits can be on each corner, with the fourth right in the center, hopefully a large square in the center.

jack> Please use many rigid, straight lines and many 90 degree angles.

How’s this?

four exits, but which is the entrance?

I don’t know which is the start, but the connections are in the spoiler!

Spoiler Inside	SelectShow
follow the red lines!

I made this maze with lots of pointy angles instead of smooth curves. Sometimes life plays hardball. Curves coming next week!

from dot to dot

Start from one dot and go to the other dot. Top left to bottom right is easier than the other way around.

from dot to dot

Click the spoiler to see 20 steps how this was made, including the solution!

Spoiler Inside	SelectShow

The basic pattern for this maze was taken from a game level I made for a guy I met online.   I hope to do some cross-promotion with his work and mine!

This maze is quite easy no matter which way you solve it.  One way is just very circuitous!

from dot to dot

Click below for the wrong way to go!

Spoiler Inside	SelectShow
don’t go this way!

I recently saw a ten second tutorial on how to smooth lines in Gimp.

I used it to smooth the lines in this maze.   The start and end points are in the upper right corner.

from dot to dot

There are times that I want to make mazes with one-way portions, and I recently figured out a way to do so that would kinda make sense without saying much.

In February, I titled the image “over there” as in where to go when solving the maze, but it looks so dense as I post it now that I prefer the name Crowded Mouse.

follow paths from this arrow to that arrow

Zazie was the first person to give me coins on http://dogeparty.io/ 10,000 CUTE!!!

from asterisk to asterisk

I started this maze while on the train with Lin to Paola and Jon’s house. Start at one of the small dots and travel to the other dot, using teleportation points as needed.

travel from small dot to small dot using teleportation symbols

Travis had an interesting idea for a promotional tool: a business card creator!  He made one at FabCafe in Shibuya based on this design.

from dot to dot

This took a while to create.  I started with a maze that followed a grid and then curved all the curves smoothly with meticulous cutting and pasting of quarter circles.   I don’t know if there’s a faster way to do it with Gimp, but Travis was able to recreate something like this much more quickly with Illustrator, I think he said.

If you follow the paths without turning sharply, it’s relatively difficult to travel between the white nodes that are diagonally opposite each other.

travel like a train from stations in diagonally opposite corners

This maze uses a tiling technique that makes for interesting patterns and slightly faster maze-making.  However, it makes the making so easy that the solving is too difficult for me personally.  I use flood fill to make sure it’s solvable.

Oh, and it’s called Comedy because I was watching Dave Chappelle and Louis C.K. when I made it.

Start and end are the dots on the right

I have no idea why I called this Circles, but the interior jagged lines were created by creating a relatively tight grid in Gimp and telling the cursor to follow the grid.

The start and end points are on the right, near the top.

travel from dot to dot

This one started with the big empty shapes and then I added the angular border.  I had been planning to do something like Enlined Shapes, but ended up doing almost the opposite.

Travel from one dot to the other.

I made this maze while Takumi and Mikarin were at our house.  Takumi seemed the most interested, though I wasn’t able to explain *why* I was drawing it.

Go in here and out there.

I am thrilled when I get to draw mazes for people to publish! I made this maze for the book Aba and Shamana, by Cynthia L. Floriani.

Help Aba follow the paths to reach Shamana!

Help Aba reach Shamana

I made this maze at Sarutahiko Coffee shop in Ebisu.  They have a fun friendly environment and great cocoa!   English writeup on timeout.jp

It my first maze after I learned how to use the paths tool a bit more effectively.

Travel from 1 dot to 2 dots