Nine Islands (WIP)

[maackey]

nine_islands.pngnine_islands_v0.2.jpg
"My First Map"

Its more of a test to see if I can go through a few tutorials and get out a half-decent map. The tutorials, while awesome, sometimes were very complex and used imo way too many steps to achieve some effects. So I made my image tiny and played around with all the filters, overlays, brushes, etc. until I found a quick and dirty way to achieve the look I was going for. Which brings me to ask: does anyone have any good ideas for showing tropic/arctic/etc. biomes while still keeping the abstract old-fantasy feel? Also hints and suggestions on how to make it look better are much appreciated.

edit: fixed a couple errors, changed some filters and saved as a jpg for size, but herp derp jpg don't have transparency. Anyway kept both for comparison.

[Ghostman]

This is really awesome for first map, repped! For showing the biomes, you could go with slight variations in color.

The text box with the scale needs some work, it's so clean and crisp that it looks out of place on the map. To start with it needs to have the same paper effect overlaid on it, and should get rid of the perfectly straight edges.

[Lukc]

Nice canvas effect! It really looks like oil on canvas, and the sea is beautiful. I'd recommend making the legend (text box) fit a bit better as well, though!

[maackey]

wow, thanks

@Ghostman:I've got a whole jumble of layers and all the overlay/grain merge stuff makes different colors really hard to get looking right. I suppose its not a big deal since atm the style is more artsy than informative. I've replaced the trees with some pines and I think that helps a bit, colors are still wonky though XD

@Lukc: hahaha, those are the wonders of GIMP's "Oilify" and "Apply Canvas" filters on top of some desaturaded (then "colorified") plasma

The box is a sort of placeholder for something better. I'm currently working on scribbling up a cartouche:
cartouche.png
I can only imagine how retardedly long it is going to take to finish D:

[maackey]

So I've decided to split up the islands into separate maps and combine them all later, because with 2 gigs of ram I can't do anything too exciting

So first up is Gala which is the most fleshed out of the "nine".
gala_v0.1.jpg

I've still got to add forests and cities and some other minor details. I apparently also forgot to add that the scale is in leagues, which puts this little island at about the size of Russia more or less.

[Ghostman]

At that scale it's more a continent than an island

[arsheesh]

Regarding your map of Gala, the mountains look pretty good, except that in places you can tell where they overlap. The ocean seems a bit dark for this style of map, obscuring details such as the wave patterns. Overall, most of the map looks blurry, as if you had either applied a Gaussian Blur to it or had increased the scale of the map. I recommend retracing the continent, rivers, ocean waves and other such elements on new layers and deleting the current ones as this will yield a sharper and more consistent map.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh