The Island Kives - From Hand-drawn to GIMP

[Niall Mackay]

Hi,
so since this is my first bigger project in a longer time and the first one in GIMP (aside from the one following RobAs tutorial), i thought i'd post it here and maybe get some comments, critic and tips. Especially for the mountains, they are driving me nuts at the moment...

So, first step: My old hand drawn map.
Inselkönigreiche3.jpg

Again I followed the tutorial for the sea, grass and dirt layers. Then i jumped to the other mountain tutorial, i think the look better for a map with a smaller scale. But these mountains seem to do what they want...
First try: Looks like someone trodd on the mountains and stamped them into the ground. Not so good. And the rim is nearly as high as the peak...
Gebirge1.jpg

Unfortunaltely i already deleted the layers from the second and third try. They look a bit like the first one, and were awful.
Fourth try: I downloded that Felimage-Plugin and tried it with that. Turned out a bit better, but i still don't like it. The mountains are too big. And are cut through by the fjords.
gebirge2.jpg

Fifth Try: Now i cut out the fjords from the selection before, and took a smaller noise. Worked best so far, i'm quite pleased how it works with the shoreline, but the landside edge is still not very nice to look at...
Gebirge3.jpg

And a complete map of the island so far:
Versuch KivesUNFERTIG.jpg


Now i'm off for a weekend of real-life mountain studies... perhaps that'll help.

Thanks for any comments and tips on my mountain problem...
Have a nice weekend!

[Niall Mackay]

Next take on the mountains:
I completely deleted all previous mountains and redid both of them, plus the southern one.

Berge2.jpg
The southern and eastern ones turned out pretty well, but the westen one ist still not what i'm trying to get...
The problem is, there are a coulpe of rivers supposed to run from a higer ridge on the eastern edge of the mountains through valleys into the fjord system. So i can't do it like i did with the southern one, or the rivers will cut through a whole ridge later... -.-

Enough for today, i'll probably try a bit more tomorrow.

[Niall Mackay]

Played a bit with the rest of the mountains and the hill lands around them.
Hills.jpg

Hills were done the same way as the mountains, following the tutorial, but with a gradient map from brown to darker brown with low opacity between the two embossed layers.

I think i'll consider this step done, finally.