World Project

Already done actually. I decided the scale of the map and the Latitudes it would cover back when I designed it. The southern tropic line 23.5 runs through the upper continent, hence the desert to the west of the mountains. The southern 60 is near the bottom of the map, giving way to the frozen south. I was more inquiring about the best or easiest way to draw them on my map in GIMP.

I realize it not what your asking but 0 degree of longitude would probably be determined by the most powerful or advance seafaring country. i.e (Britain in our world)

As far as doing it in gimp I would say just add a transparent layer and put a grid on it. But what I kno of gimp couldn't fill a post.

I actually had not considered that. As far as the environment goes, lines of Longitude have no effect but it is something interesting to think about for more geo-political reasons. Thanks for bringing that to my attention, Sathurn

Well, here is my first attempt at a regional map. Do you guys think it would be too cluttered if I added river names?
Attachment 48845Attachment 48846

That looks good. I think you can add river names but maybe in a different font so they didn't get lost. :)

Here is the finished(?) map. Is there anything you guys think I should add or fix?
Attachment 48860

Looks good to me. There's ALWAYS something you can go back and tweak or change or add (hence the saying NO map is ever truly "done") The questions are: are YOU happy with it for a first project? (I know I would be) Does it do most of what you wanted it to? Did you learn some new techniques and tricks to make the next one a little bit "better"? and MOST IMPORTANTLY: did you have fun making it? If you can answer those with mostly yes than I would say that it's "done enough" and time to move on to the next one. Great job I really enjoyed watching this evolve. :)

Then Yes, that region map is done. Is the world map done? No. Still working on that. On to the next region.

So I am working on the island region to the west of my last region map, Du'Lar. The south western part of the map, a very cold region (think Scandinavia) is populated by four main "barbarian" or "viking" tribes. As you can see, I have colored each town based on to which tribe it belongs. Does this seem like a cheesy or overly simplistic way to do this? Is there a way that you guys would suggest that would let the reader know they are different tribes but is not quite so overt or blatant? Thanks for your help.
Attachment 48993

It's not cheesy. If you do want the distinction to be more subtle, you could use filled dots, with the fill color carrying the meaning.

Do be intentional in how you choose elements and characteristics to support your desired look. The drop shadows don't look bad, but they do steer the viewer away from the "hand lettered" statement your font choice seems to be trying for. I guess any satellite style will do the same - hard to look anything but modern from orbit :-). Still, if all you want to do is match the era depicted, no problems - just don't have an in-character cartographer pass it off as his handiwork, or he might get in trouble.

I like it - keep going!