Linlandia using Gidde's Hand Dawn tutorial

[hohum]

Yes there is a legend in progress. As with most of my workflow, this small element has turned into a major project of its own. I also still need to try a fix or two on the roads and the labels.

[Ilvarin]

Great looking map. I'm planning on giving that tut a shot myself. Any hiccups you might want to share? I love that style though and really want to get my maps into it.

[Seretur]

Ah, the hexagonal tiles explain the odd city placement. I have to second what Diamond said, the diamond (hah!) grid layout doesn't seem to fit a country named the Horde. Other than that, it looks great!

[hohum]

@Ilvarin - No I don't recall any hiccups, the tutorial seems to work out of the box. What I have noticed about applying the "ink bleed" technique is that it may be hard to see at large pixel sizes/resolution but I haven't exactly figured out why this is so. I've tried it on some non map projects that are 3300 x 2550 at 300ppi and it doesn't quite look the same. Perhaps just need to enlarge the blur and spread so it can be seen.

@Seretur - I think it also just requires a little more imagination. The original had no roads what so ever, so I just threw something together to complete the road step. Also Horde may be inappropriate, again it was the first thing that came to mind. These are from notes made sometime around 1992 that I only unearthed a few weeks ago and all I had to go on was the term Nar - Gragthang in reference to the "Horde".

[hohum]

Well here is the "fixed" version. I ended up using RobA's dsiplace map method, but the plasma was at 3.5 and the displace was only one or two pixels anything more and it got super distorted. The major changes are: Roads, outer glow added to text in GIMP. Then I added the checkered border and woodcut detail. I'm hoping that this meets with general approval, I then have to get cracking on the legend

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Oh yeah, I also had to fudge with the image size to get even spacing to fit my woodcuts. I think that this should not have taken me 11 days, perhaps I need to clock in to see how much time I actually spent mapping versus farting around.

[Diamond]

Much better roads in the Horde lands now. I like this map quite a bit, dude. Kudos to you.

[Coyotemax]

This is pretty darn fine! I kept looking over it for constrictive criticism to offer, and it was hard. the only thing I can find to comment on is that the outer glow looks a little odd to me since it's lighter than the background colours of the paper itself. I try to set it up so the space around the text matches the background exactly - not easy to do when using mottled textures, i know. The way i found around it in photoshop is to put everything between the paper layers and the text into their own group and mask the areas around the text.. not sure how that would work in gimp though. I know it can do masking, but I don't know about masking multiple layers at once, unless you'd have to merge the layers and do it that way.

But really, it's a tiny point, and I had to work hard to find it This is a map to be proud of!
[edit]
well i really should read more before posting, I see there's been issues with the text already, heh. feel free to disregard my comments above if you like, I see you've been having to fight a bit of a battle to get things where they are...

[Juggernaut1981]

I'd suggest you maybe try setting the text layer to another blend mode. I'd be thinking that maybe multiply might work well... also if you drop the brightness and contrast in combination you should get less of the "glow brighter than paper" effect you currently have.

[hohum]

Doh! I forgot the brightness and contrast suggestion. Here it is with the feature and Country label glows set to hard light and the town label glow set to overlay. The opacity of all the glow layers is the default 75%. Multiply makes the glow too dark for my tastes. In the future I will probably sub divide the text layers by font size as I think that is also part of the problem, striking a balance that is legible for all sizes.

[Ascension]

Exactly, the same glow doesn't work the same at all font sizes. Live n learn, eh, but ya learn something new with every map. So that's a good thing and you're learning a lot and putting it to use so good job.