WIP using RobA's GIMP Tutorial

[Karro]

Very nice so far! 2 things, one IMO is a bit more important(first one), the other not so much:

The rivers look a bit to fat for the most part and uniform in width. I know this is VERY hard to get right with just a mouse, so I totally understand. I bought a tablet mainly for the purpose of drawing rivers with variable widths.

You may want to consider using a noise layer set to overlay just over top of your grass and below rivers, forests, etc and masked with the land mask. This will get you a bit more color variation in your green grass layer with no manual painting and very little over all effort. If you feel like it, you can play with it over your dirt also, but I don't know how if that will look good as I have not tried it myself. Take a look: http://www.cartographersguild.com/at...3&d=1212462223
between the two big forests for an example and give it a try to see if you like it. I think for "mine" I actually did two different overlays with differnt noise settings to get something l liked.

Joe

Thanks. I'll have to work on the rivers issue. I agree that they look a little strange, atm. In order to have the river thin as it branched into headwaters approaching the mountains, I used progessively thinner brushes. But to vary the width of the river in different spots, I'm going to have to go back and adjust the layer masks manually, darkening up the edges here and there to thin the river out a little in places... I guess that means also redoing the bevel... Didn't have time to try this yet today.

Here is an update to the above image (without new rivers yet) with some labels.

The place-names are intentionally whimsical/silly, a reminder for me that this is a practice map of nowhere in particular.

[jfrazierjr]

The place-names are intentionally whimsical/silly, a reminder for me that this is a practice map of nowhere in particular.

As a young man, I was given a treasure map to a land of untold riches. I gathered an expedition and travled from the Great Placia Mountains down the Placia River. We passed through Capitalica into the ocean, turning South. We finally tacked South East after passing Cape Somewheria. After several weeks for travel our ship veered northward and on to Port South Placia. After a few days, we left port and plotted our course, ending up in Itty Bitty Island Village, where we looted the gold in their temples and captured a hugh ape creature. After returning the back to Capitalica, the great ape escaped, climbed wizards tower where our Griffon Guard pestered him until he fell to his death. No one has been back to Itty Bitty Island Village again and the King has outlawed importation of any animals from other lands.




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On a side note, if I had not said it before, I really love your forests. They look great!



Joe

[Karro]

As a young man, I was given a treasure map to a land of untold riches. I gathered an expedition and travled from the Great Placia Mountains down the Placia River. We passed through Capitalica into the ocean, turning South. We finally tacked South East after passing Cape Somewheria. After several weeks for travel our ship veered northward and on to Port South Placia. After a few days, we left port and plotted our course, ending up in Itty Bitty Island Village, where we looted the gold in their temples and captured a hugh ape creature. After returning the back to Capitalica, the great ape escaped, climbed wizards tower where our Griffon Guard pestered him until he fell to his death. No one has been back to Itty Bitty Island Village again and the King has outlawed importation of any animals from other lands.




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On a side note, if I had not said it before, I really love your forests. They look great!



Joe

It's like the legend of Donkey Kong!

I suggested to the fiancee last week that I was looking at ebay to see if I could get a reasonably-priced tablet.

She asked "wouldn't you rather be writing than drawing? Or finding a new job?" She's got a point, she does. I'm more of a writer than an artist; it's why I make maps in the first place. And I do rather despise my current job... I do want one, but I realize now is not the time for me to get one, as I have other priorities for the foreseeable future.

Still, I'm getting good results without it for now. I didn't have time all weekend to work on this, it was quite busy, but I'll try to work on some updates soon

[Karro]

Okay, so I tried to take Joe's suggestion and go back and redo the rivers a little (and add a little noise to the ground). I just fuzzed up the edges of the rivers with a soft brush, and thinned them out. I put a b&w gradient on a plasma noise and overlayed it over the ground layer to provide some additional noise on the ground cover. I also added an additional terrain label.



Then, I started in on the title. Here is the final output for that. I noticed that I couldn't follow RobA's instructions exactly because, given the order he used by applying the mask to the gradient/curve layer over the title label first and then distressing the edge of the title lable left some unusual artifacts along the edge of the title label. By removing the mask on the gradient curve layer, then alpha-to-selection on the new, distressed-edge title layer, and using that selection for the mask on the gradient curve cleaned up those artifacts.



Finally, the border. I didn't try to do a legend or compass rose.



And that's that. I think I've learned enough about GIMP to give it another go round and to be a little more adventurous in what I try next time round. I started the thread with a second set of coastlines begun using RobA's tutorial, so I'll see what I can do with that one now.

[RobA]

I noticed that I couldn't follow RobA's instructions exactly because, given the order he used by applying the mask to the gradient/curve layer over the title label first and then distressing the edge of the title lable left some unusual artifacts along the edge of the title label. By removing the mask on the gradient curve layer, then alpha-to-selection on the new, distressed-edge title layer, and using that selection for the mask on the gradient curve cleaned up those artifacts.

Thanks for catching that! I knew I had messed something up in my notes

-Rob A>

[Ascension]

I love the color scheme, I hope you don't mind if I try to incorporate that into my work.

[Karro]

I love the color scheme, I hope you don't mind if I try to incorporate that into my work.

I just used, primarily, the color scheme from RobA's GIMP tutorial, which I believe he borrowed from another tutorial on city-mapping. So, feel free, I think

[Karro]

Thanks for catching that! I knew I had messed something up in my notes

-Rob A>

No problem. Thank you for creating the tutorial in the first place! It helped me learn enough about GIMP to know what to do once I saw the error.