Maze of the Week #87 - Danzante Conchero Chichimeca Maze

August 28, 2023

Maze of the Week #87 takes us to the city of Queretaro in Mexico. This statue of the Danzante Conchero Chichimeca is located just outside of the main plaza in the city. If you visit you will be sure to see it. I lived nearby and have walked past it hundreds of times. You mazy not notice but there is some color on the statue, although the feathers near the head of the dancer have faded over time (they were blue and white).

Photos: All taken by me.

YouTube: This is a long video of the festival in Queretaro that shows many different festivities like a parade and dancing. I do not think I am in the background of this video, but…maybe. I did attend many of these things !

The Maze: Originally this maze was abandoned and made my list of mistakes in maze making.

Why I abandoned these 10 mazes - Mistakes in Maze making

Then I went back an made it into another case study, which you can read about here. I did need to cheat to maze the picture I made though !

I hope you enjoy the maze. Maze download is available. Check out my YouTube channel where you can watch this maze be made and solved !!!

Coming these next few weeks: Mazes with case studies !

Tiki Totem Maze (last week)

El Danzante Conchero Chichimeca Maze (this one)

A maze of a performing arts center

A maze of a sign

A maze of ruins

Case Study #1 - How to Improve a Bad Maze

August 22, 2023

Today I present a case study for improving one of my abandoned mazes, the Tiki Totem Maze which ended up becoming Maze of the Week #86. Here is my analysis from a previous blog:

“Abandoned Maze #4 - Tiki Totem Maze

I thought this would be a good idea. Tiki totems are so cool. I can’t quite put my finger on this. It just isn’t good enough to be on the site as a weekly featured maze. I think it MIGHT be able to be fixed. Add color to the totem, and to make it more interesting - SHADOWS. I would also try a more complex maze structure vs the current kids level format. But I can’t be sure that will be enough…so it will not get done ….or it will. We’ll see. Mistake made: Not enough details / interest”

And I must say, for a maze to be recoverable, the mistake made of not enough details/interest is a giveaway that the maze is salvageable with some additional work. Now let’s look at that original maze, also known as the ‘before’:

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

1. Color - The actual tiki is not black and white (nor does it have brown accents as the initial maze pathways imply. I went with the weathered grey color of the tiki. I switched the color of the walls to a complementary charcoal color.

2. Shadows added - It is a tiki on a beach so it is in the sun. I went with lots of shadows ! This really shows the shape of the tiki better, especially the eye area. I took the extra time to shadow the nose, neck, and under the pecs.

3. Maze placement - The tiki is full length and sits in the sand on a beach, but I only made the top portion. It is also surrounded by a sea of white nothingness. After considering adding the full totem, I instead decided to place the totem against the bottom of the page which allowed for….

4. Beach scene added - By moving the totem forward there is a large background to fill. That was a perfect place to add a background that included a beach, a palm tree and the sky. I spent 70% of the time improving this maze working on the leaves of the tree, then used a gradient color to accurately color the trunk. I did my best to add foam to the break of the water at the shore.

5. Start and Goal changed - The placement also meant a change from arrows to an internal Start and Goal using lettering.

6. Sky addition - The white sky felt like empty space. Might as well finish the color. I went cloudless like a great day at the beach (with sunscreen).

7. Lettering and branding - Add the name of the maze and my branding both of which were previously missing.

Also considered but not updated:

I decided to not change the actual maze beyond minor moves. It remains easy for kids but looks a lot better for everyone; Something on the water like a boat or a shark fin, or the sky like the sun or some birds; The full totem poll (as mentioned above).

And now the “After”. The new maze:

I think this is an improvement. What do you think ? Should I have added more details ?

This is how the Tiki Totem became Maze of the Week #86 after sitting on the shelf for over 2 years ! Maze download is available !

Maze of the Week #86 - Tiki Totem Maze

August 21, 2023

Maze of the Week #86 takes us to Hawaii and a maze of a Tiki Totem. It is the first of a series of mazes that I originally made, abandoned, then re-imagined for the site.

You can read about what tikis are on this Hawaii website. But my laymen definition is they are mythical symbols of gods and guardians. An example would be Ku - the god of war.

YouTube: Here is the making of a tiki head that is really fun to watch !

Photo: Here is a photo from Hawaii that shows the tiki my maze was made of (the tiki on the left). A wonderful photo showing the tikis in black and white against the powerful ocean in the background. They are located in PUʻUHONUA O HŌNAUNAU NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK - flickr, Stephen Hinde

Tiki Totems — Tikis - flickr, ***Stephen Hinde***

The Maze: Originally this maze was abandoned and made my list of mistakes in maze making.

Why I abandoned these 10 mazes - Mistakes in Maze making

This maze has a story that I will go into later in a Case Study, so if you like before/after and maze design I suggest you read that, but here is the final product after much work !! The maze is easy to solve and the maze construction is free hand drawn.

I hope you enjoy the maze. Maze download is available on the homepage. Check out my YouTube channel where you can watch this maze be made and solved !!!

Coming these next 5 weeks: Mazes with case studies !

A tiki maze (this week)

A maze of a statue - (next week)

A maze of a performing arts center

A maze of a sign

A maze of ruins

The Largest Square Labyrinth in the World

August 15, 2023

The Largest Square Labyrinth in the World (Probably*). I wanted to test out my method of making square labyrinths and make sure I got the math right, etc, and decided to go for the world record. A record that does not exist and could easily be beaten. If you have seen my How to Make a Labyrinth section I feature over 20 different options for many different shapes. My previous largest labyrinth with directions was for the 27 circuit classical labyrinth.

I will not be doing directions for this one - but I will be showing you a few point in the process, and if you want you can adapt this blog post of an 11 circuit into directions for any size easily. Here is the starting seed pattern.

99 circuit square labyrinth seed pattern — Seed pattern 99 circuit square labyrinth

The math of this is that each of the 4 sections have 25 pathways, so that is 50 across the whole pattern. To determine the circuit # the math is 2x pathways minus one, or 2 x 50 - 1 = 99 circuits. So to make a seed pattern for an X size labyrinth use that formula.

I wanted to show you how this looked after connecting only the top portion of pathways. As you can see things get large quickly !

And let’s just skip to the final 99 Square Circuit Labyrinth, The Largest Square Labyrinth in the World (probably*).

99 circuit square labyrinth — 99 Square Circuit Labyrinth

For most of you (99.8%) that is going to look terrible because it is so large compared to your screen. Now take your finger and travel the pathways for the next few hours and….yeah no, do not do that.

I will mention a tip common in making labyrinths that you may have noticed. The center point changes from the starting seed to the final labyrinth drastically. So, if you are making this, or any other labyrinth start it lower on the paper to account for this. See the illustration below shown in red and blue: