My first map, WIP

[jfrazierjr]

I added the fertile river valley and the high mountain plateau, and adjusted the coloring of the transition band. I also added a bump map to the ocean floors and did the coastline stroke like Robb suggested in his tutorial.

In my opinion, the river valley is a bit to regular. Make a few points where it flairs out a bit more and perhaps consider using a gradient blend to show how it gets lusher the closer to the river you get.

All in all, I'm quite happy with this map. I've learned quite a bit about GIMP and about map making:

• Like Rob pointed out, I need to keep map scale in mind when drawing rivers to keep from making them too curvy.
• Similarly, I think I need to work on my mountain placement. The width of the central North-South range in particular just looks regular for my tastes.
• I like the two-step elevation process I played around with here, and I have a few ideas of how to play around with that in the future.
• I kind of like the canyons in the southwest - I need to play around with the idea a bit more to refine it though.
• I like the three bands of ground color, and imagine it could be expanded to include a tundra and an icy band as well.
• I also like the two different colors of mountain.
• I really like the way using plasma clouds affects the forests.

1. I think the two elevation process is a good idea, it just does not look natural in this execution. Perhaps as you say the problem is that it is two uniform in width
2. canyons are cool
3. Multiple color bands are very cool
4. different mountain colors is a very good mutation of the tutorial
5. plasma = good! your forests rock!

For rivers : I personnaly "cut" forests where I want to put a river. The result is, in my opinion, a little bit better. But it's not perfect ...

I agree to some point with this. In a perfect world, I would have bits if the river hidden and show as it winds through the forest.