I've been requested to share my work in its own thread, so I thought I would oblige. I'm currently working on a world map and I will post my progress in this thread.

I've told the story here twice, so I'll condense it: a) been working on a fantasy world for 10+ years, b) been using same hand drawn world map until c) said hand drawn map was lost between moves. d) decided to draw a new one, more scientifically based, e) decided to try drawing it on GIMP, f) searching for "GIMP draw maps" led me here, g) read RobA's tutorial and decided to give it a try.

So this time, before drawing random continents and coastlines, I decided to base my map on a bit of science and started with plate tectonics. My first task was to draw my tectonic plates, which I did by hand on notebook paper (the only thing I had available at the time the inspiration hit).

I have since scanned my original drawing and touched it up with the GIMP. Here are my plates and their general direction of movement (as was said in my tutorial, movement isn't quite as simple as that, but for my purposes, it will work):

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Then based on the plate boundaries and some of my own design, I drew my continents and islands. I first did this by making a copy of my original hand drawn tectonic plate map and drawing the continents over it. I then used white out to eliminate the plate lines.

However I have also scanned my map of the continents and superimposed it onto my tectonic plate map:

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And finally, a rough, two tone image of my world map:

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I do plan to add a lot more detail like inland seas and lakes, gulfs, bays, more islands, more random coastlines in places, etc.

And following that will be the arduous process of detailing it using RobA's GIMP methods (as well as those by others who have extended the process).

One thing I need to do is dramatically increase the size of my continental map. I found that GIMP is unable to generate bump maps fine enough for a global scale map, at least not with any method I know of.

If anybody has any advice or suggestions, please let me know. Thanks for looking!