[Award Winner] Hand-Drawn Mapping (for the Artistically Challenged)

[Errandir]

First of all: thank you a lot Gidde for the amazing tutorial. And congrats to the mappers who uploaded their attempts (sometimes even very first mapping attempts). I thought they looked wonderful.
Thanks as well Milesteg for bundling the brushes.

I was trying to recreate the custom brushes in Procreate (iOS app), but there I seem to have hit a snag. I think it's software related and might not be overcome, but I'm asking none the less should someone have had a similar experience. When making a custom brush, black is taken as opaque and white as transparent. When using the brush, the parts that stay 'white' in Gidde's tutorial actually are transparent and so what's underneath shows through that part of the mountain. I presume that the custom brush in GIMP actually takes the mountain as an image and retains the white color like that (I've read somewhere GIMP has 2 types of custom brushes, image or grey-scale). I don't seem to find a way to make a custom brush in Procreate act the same way. If anyone has had better luck, please do share!
(PS: perhaps it's more appropriate to post this question in the Software Discussion forum?)

[KCRileyGyer]

Interesting tutorial. I've only ever used PaintShop Pro (PSP) long before Corel had bought it and have only used it since so I try to see if I can translate such tutorials from one program to the next. Not always so successful.

So, the first thing I did was read it only to be confused by some of it. Last night, I tried part of it but could only do the basics (image 1). There is only so much PSP can do even with a limited understanding of GIMP capabilities. I had already been downloading PS brushes... can they be installed into GIMP at all? If so, how? ...just so I had them on hand to play with even if they weren't the same as the ones used in the tutorial.

Today, being a bunch of firsts, I tried the tutorial in GIMP for the first time and used my new tablet for the first time (image 2). I'm not happy with the rivers so will have to do them again.

Some of those processes I didn't understand while trying it in PSP became clearer in GIMP but I still can't do them in PSP lol.

So, here are my attempts so far and I'll stop gabbing now lol.

[KCRileyGyer]

Well, for better or worse, I finished my first map in GIMP. I seemed to have gotten the border wrong at some point and didn't realise until the end. I'm using the latest version of GIMP so some things didn't quite translate properly but, being new to the program, I hopefully did reasonably well. However, By the time the colouring comes in for the rivers, it tells to grab the River channel but there is no step telling to create the river channel. So, I'd just selected the blank area of the river layer, inverted then continued with the tutorial. The labels suck because I didn't know how to manipulate the text after typing; I hadn't used the text tool before and it isn't a tutorial I've come across during my massive reading sessions on this site lol.

Anyway, feedback welcome.

[XCali]

Well, for better or worse, I finished my first map in GIMP. I seemed to have gotten the border wrong at some point and didn't realise until the end. I'm using the latest version of GIMP so some things didn't quite translate properly but, being new to the program, I hopefully did reasonably well. However, By the time the colouring comes in for the rivers, it tells to grab the River channel but there is no step telling to create the river channel. So, I'd just selected the blank area of the river layer, inverted then continued with the tutorial. The labels suck because I didn't know how to manipulate the text after typing; I hadn't used the text tool before and it isn't a tutorial I've come across during my massive reading sessions on this site lol.

Anyway, feedback welcome.

Hehe! Well done for a first map in Gimp.
As a relatively seasoned GIMP user by now, I can tell you it gets way easier as you go. Learning the ins and outs of the program is daunting at the start. But, don't give up.

As for the text? Man, I can't tell you how long I myself struggled with labelling a map. So, for a first try, not bad.
Tip for that though, choose a creamy color for the text itself and a DARKish color for the background color(Mostly some color that fits the theme of the map). For some reason, white as a background color for the text has that glowy blurry effect, don't ask me why. Also, don't Gaussian blur the heck out of that background text color, it is better to either have a solid color, or a very tiny amount of blur for it.
Hope it helps.
Try it and get back to us.

EDIT:
I just saw the shadows having an odd effect with the mountains, if that hint of shadows you placed is on its own layer(it should be, makes it easier). I would suggest giving it 1point of Gaussian blur. that would remove that hard line.

Also, something you can do to fill in the back stretch that is a bit featureless, is to take a random cloudy brush, (If you are using gimp 2.10, then one of those animated brushes included with the red cross at its bottom)
CREATE a layer above the color layer somewhere, put it on multiply or overlay, and on a LOW opacity, and a dark color close to your theme, paint in random depressions. A few, but for showing the idea, Whispering Path and Hunters Fall
(Just a note, I had a month or more to do each of these. )

[KCRileyGyer]

Thank you for the feedback, Omri, I'll either give your suggestions a go tomorrow or Saturday. I'm looking forward to trying them out.

Your images are cool.

[KCRileyGyer]

Because my first attempt had issues, I'm doing this tutorial again. In the section Roads and Cities> Step 3: Roads for Real... After applying the stroke, the tutorial says:

"For some reason, every time I did this, my stroke came out orange. No idea why."

The reason is because, in the pattern section, an orange pattern is selected. One either needs to find an existing pattern that is sufficiently dark or create one and install it (remembering to restart GIMP for the program to see it - if that works the same way as brushes).

I'll show round two of my attempt either later today or tomorrow.

[KCRileyGyer]

Oh, I forgot to add that the tutorial also doesn't mention needing a Rivers channel despite instructing to load it during the colouring section. <Ignore this, I found the instructions that I'd missed the first time. It wasn't where I thought it would be and was tired when I'd originally read that section. That'll teach me to read properly.

[KCRileyGyer]

UPDATE FOR GIMP 2.10.6 USERS

Page 28 - Texture
After desaturating the plasma cloud texture, you have to apply a bump map, do as follows:

Go to Filters> Map> Bump Map... Click on the little viewport to the right of the Aux Input.
A little menu of your image layers will appear. Double left-click the Texture layer as a single clicking won't work.
Then follow the rest of the tutorial instructions to apply the bump map.

[KCRileyGyer]

Well, there will be no new version of this from me because by the time I get to brushing in the mountains, hills and forests, whenever I hide a different layer any or all three of those brushed features will disappear. I have restarted this tutorial from scratch three times now and it's the same problem every time. I'm stuck and don't know what to do about it. I'm using gimp and following the tutorial as best as gimp 2.10.6 will allow me. I guess it's time for me to translate it into PSP lol.

[KCRileyGyer]

For better or worse, here is the result of completing this tutorial; with modifications to achieve the (hopefully) same results in the latest version of Gimp due to the brush layers disappearing whenever merging where told. I'm still having issues with the text labels so I'd just omitted them.