Silembria

[jfrazierjr]

Ah! the tip considering smudge-tech on the mountains:



Will test that in my next map containing mountains

Ah yea... I can't take credit for it though. If you want to see more and get some good instructions, go to the Featured Maps and find the Manthria map here:http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=499 by Sir Alain.

And here is a direct link to his tutorial. Note that his tutorial assumes (instructs) you to do this in B/W, but the process can be used in any event in color, you just have be a bit more careful. http://www.santharia.com/workshop/maps_1.htm Page 6 is where he does the mountains.

I played with it and now the smudge tool is my new favorite toy! I seem to be trying to do do everything with it now.... What I did the first time I was playing with this was to smudge the original mountain lines. While this looked ok, I was a bit sloppy and some of the hard lines were blurred when they should not have been (ie, the mountain shape). After a second play, what I did was to do my upside down 'V's on their own layer, with NOTHING else. Duplicate and add the various shading colors and smudge and then move the original back over top to get my hard line back in case I messed up the working layer. VERY NICE technique. If anyone's interested, I will post up a few different types of samples from what I played with.


Joe

Joe

[Midgardsormr]

If anyone's interested, I will post up a few different types of samples from what I played with.

I'm interested! Manthria is one of my favourites, too, and any variations and commentary on that style are quite welcome.

[jfrazierjr]

I'm interested! Manthria is one of my favourites, too, and any variations and commentary on that style are quite welcome.

Here are a few examples of the same mountains with different backgrounds. One is a png so you can get the transparency, the others are just jpg to keep the file size down a bit.

I also played around several weeks ago with more of a "craggy" random line mountains with lots of hooks and crags and stuff, but that was much more of a 90 degree from the side view. I loved the look, but don't really have something I can use and unfortunately, I did not save my samples.

While I think the results are great, this is not something where you would want to do 100s of mountains manually. This would KILL your wrist unless you have enough patience to do a few and the come back later and repeat this process(which I just don't have). If I was to want make a large number of mountains for a map of this type, I would probably figure out how to make 5-10 base template brushes or something like that in GIMP and carefully brush them into a picture with alternating brushes. This is also exactly what the creator of the Manthria map suggests also. Hmmm.... anyone know if GIMP has a way to create a "brush set" and have it alternate between the various brushes as you stroke on the map? I assume the answer is no, but it never hurts to ask eh...

Start to finish, this took me around 30-40 minutes or so to build up the mountains and then blend in with the smudge tool before I saved the results. Hope you enjoy.

Joe

[Kurvstol]

Decided to post a black and white version of the map

Please tell me which version you think looks the best

[jfrazierjr]

Decided to post a black and white version of the map

Please tell me which version you think looks the best

I have to say that I really prefer the color one because with the shapes of your trees, without color, it is hard to know for sure that they are supposed to be forests, ESPECIALLY the pointy ones at the top and right side (where you might mistake them for pointy hills or small mountains. Now, if you did B/W and had a different style of trees, then that might be a different story.

Also, with the B/W for a base, you could always copy it and come back in with a color wash(like a lite/muted water color) to give it just a tinge of colors and that might look good, but not sure as it's an idea that just popped into my head.

[RobA]

anyone know if GIMP has a way to create a "brush set" and have it alternate between the various brushes as you stroke on the map? I assume the answer is no, but it never hurts to ask eh...

Actually, Yes.

It is called an image pipe, or tube, or hose, or animated brush. (The file extension is .GIH for "Gimp Image Hose")

The easiest way (in this case) is to make each image its own layer. Set them all to visible, then save the file as whatever.gih to you brushes folder. The save options can be confusing, but there is a good (if old) reference here. Refresh the brush list and you can use it.

If the image is colour with alpha, it will only paint in colour (like the ivy brush that comes with Gimp). If it is B&W, then it will use the foreground colour, with the greyscale level being the transparency.

If you make up such a brush please post it in the resource section!

-Rob A>

[jfrazierjr]

Actually, Yes.

It is called an image pipe, or tube, or hose, or animated brush. (The file extension is .GIH for "Gimp Image Hose")

The easiest way (in this case) is to make each image its own layer. Set them all to visible, then save the file as whatever.gih to you brushes folder. The save options can be confusing, but there is a good (if old) reference here. Refresh the brush list and you can use it.

If the image is colour with alpha, it will only paint in colour (like the ivy brush that comes with Gimp). If it is B&W, then it will use the foreground colour, with the greyscale level being the transparency.

If you make up such a brush please post it in the resource section!

-Rob A>

Might get around to that in the future. I realized AFTER I posted the above (figured out how to make a regular brush) that since I had alpha on the brush, when I painted some of the lines intersected from one brush to another and it looked rather bad. What I will probably do is create 4-5 mountain templates as bases, make copies of those with a few different color schemes (light brown, gray, dark brown, etc) and then save as a big pill of brushes grouped by the "background color".

What does everyone think of the actual mountains themselves though? I tried to make the "dark" side have enough variation and with the smudges, I think it looks very nice. I also smudged the "V"s just a bit, especially at the bottoms to try to get them to blend into whatever is underneath instead of just being a solid black end to a line.

Joe

[Midgardsormr]

What does everyone think of the actual mountains themselves though?

I think they look great!

[jfrazierjr]

I think they look great!

Thank ye!

Joe