Thank you for posting this here, these are great questions and I've wanted to go in-depth on them since you posted them.
Question 1: Where do you start?
I begin with a theme, as I find it easiest to draw when I have a consistent theme to come back to whenever I run out of ideas for what to draw;
I rarely, if ever, draw without a direction. My last track, for example, was themed around Zelda: Breath of the Wild and the Temple of Time. I had a Google Doc filled with characters, Sheikah tech, enemy mobs, statues and other such Zelda paraphernalia outlined before I drew my first line, so that my direction was clear and I could focus solely on drawing. This saves time in the long run, keeps your track's detail consistent, and in my opinion makes for a more enjoyable experience for the player.
Question 2: Is it good to have a reference, topic or theme for your track before detailing? How would you go about that?
This is entirely subjective, and my point of view on this is incredibly biased; as stated before, I don't draw
unless I have a theme, and furthermore reference pictures. Some could argue that it's unoriginal of me to theme my tracks around stuff that already exists, others could argue it's a cool way to re-imagine whatever I'm drawing. The decision is yours either way, but in my experience it's certainly
easier to draw when you have reference pictures and a theme handy. Just be sure that your referencing does not turn into copying, as you'll be rightfully condemned by the community. Put your own spin, direction and style into whatever you're drawing.
Example of this:
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being referenced from
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The way I go about picking a theme is simple, I draw whatever interests me the most at the time. I drew Zelda: Breath of the Wild because I had just completed my first run of the game, and was blown away by it. Before that, I drew a track based on the Avatar: Last Airbender series, a childhood favourite show of mine. If you struggle finding reference pictures, I usually add "deviantart" to the end of whatever I want a reference of, ie "Temple of Time BotW deviantart", "desert village deviantart", etc.
Question 3: Isn't simplicity better when making/detailing a track?
Again, in this regard I'm biased, because I subscribe to the "less is more" theory in track making. Really, though, you can detail as heavy as you like,
as long as your detail is clearly expressing that which you're drawing. Maple is the perfect example of this, imo; his detail is very heavy, but not to the point that what he is drawing is unrecognisable. It's what many of us describe as 'clean' detail. Ways to achieve this, is to draw bigger, and use only the straight line tool; both work to accurately portray what you're drawing, without it becoming messy or unrecognisable. Thus, I'd probably argue that clean detail is better when making a track, rather than simple detail. But again, the latter is easier than the former, so largely depends on your skill level or the amount of time you want to put into a track. Plenty of authors have found success drawing simplistically, such as Ness, Pancakes345, myself, Figured, and so on.
Question 4: Why do some riders focus on detail instead of the ride of the track?
Generally, I find this comes down to two things: detail/ride being prioritised over the other, or laziness. There's no real reason that one is prioritised over the other (usually I find the ride is neglected in favour of detail), however, both can be focused on with the right amount of attention. I have a whole thread dedicated to this very discussion, "Communal Guide to Ride Creation". Take a read through that thread, the many responses there will do this question better than what I could write now.
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