Sylvarre Regional Map in GIMP

[Solomiranthius]

This is my first attempt to create a map using RobA's "Using GIMP to Create an Artistic Regional RPG Map" and "Simple Mountains in GIMP" tutorials, along with Arsheesh's "Making Photo-realistic Trees in GIMP: A Mini-Tut". Thanks to the both of them for the great tutorials!

This was the first time I used GIMP (or really any program) to attempt mapping. Back in the day it was all graph paper and pencils/colored pencils. I like these results much better!

The forests took me a lot longer than they probably should have. I'm using GIMP for Mac, which, I think, ended up giving me slightly different results in some cases than the tutorials. Once I figured out a little bit of why and how different filters worked, I was able to tweak the instructions. I'm still not thrilled about the title banner, but decided it was good enough for my first try. I attempted to make river basins for the rivers which worked slightly (although it is hard to see). Another error in making the rivers (not sure what I did, but the river outline for coloration ended up being larger than the width of the rivers) ended up creating the more fertile looking (greenish/blue river border) edges. I like the way it looks so hopefully I can repeat that in the future.

-Edit- I would also like to make a more jagged looking coastline. I think the step that should have done that did not work for me. Similarly, I had to hand-erase the banner to create the torn effect (the tutorial method did not work for me).

I would like to make a larger atlas style (less photo-realistic at least) map for the whole world. Does anyone have recommendations for a good GIMP tutorial for that?

Comments and suggestions are welcome and appreciated!

~Solo