Greek Style Map

[Adam_Kadmon]

A new map, this time using pyrandon's Mosaic Tile Map in Photosho technique.

I like how it turned out, but now that I know what I'm doing I'm going to give it another go. I need to tweak the tile layout more so that not so many tiles merge together. I'm not that happy with the outside dirt and paving background, but it'll do for now. I need to a better job of drawing the base map too, before I lay down the tiles.

Any ideas about how to make it better?

[ChickPea]

I haven't seen that tutorial before and it's a really cool concept. I wonder if it'd translate to Gimp.

I'd say your number one issue is definitely the spacing between the tiles. If you want to sell the idea of a mosaic, you'll need to spread everything out a little and have the 'grout' effect in between. Your paving stones aren't so bad but maybe a little too regular. I think your dirt needs to be, well, dirtier LOL! I'd try for a browner tone, rather than yellow, and maybe have some random dirty spots dotted here and there over the paving at the very bottom.

This is a really great idea though and I hope you manage to tweak it to your liking.

[Adam_Kadmon]

I agree with you about the tile spacing. I'm going to give it another go tonight and see what happens.
The dirt was just a straight photoshop pattern. Putting a brown overlay on it would make it look better. I'll think I'll also do the paving stones individually. They looked too flat to me.
Does anyone have any tips about dirtying up a scene?

[ChickPea]

For the dirt, I'd just pick a grungy brush and try a dark brown or black colour with the layer blend set to Multiply. Just start painting around and see how it looks.

I think individual paving stones would look much better, and you could paint some dirt in the cracks between and maybe have it edging out from the cracks onto the stones.

I hope it wasn't a huge amount of work to create the mosaic effect (I didn't have time to read through the tutorial in detail, but it looked complicated!) Still, it's always easier and faster once you know what you're doing.

The only other suggestion I have, and this is entirely a personal taste thing, would be to desaturate the colours just a little. I'm not sure what overall effect you're going for, but I kinda feel that if it's a rather dirty mosaic floor pattern, then the colours might be a little muted and faded, whereas yours are quite bright and vivid. However, that's perhaps exactly what you want, in which disregard this suggestion!

[Adam_Kadmon]

Laying down the tiles to create the mosaic effect was actually quite quick. Once you have set up your brush correctly, you create a work path, stroke the path, then shrink the path and repeat. Once you have set it up as an action you can lay down thousands of tiles in a matter of minutes. It's well worth reading pyrandon's tutorial just to learn the method. It's not that complicated. Somebody else translated it into Gimp, but I didn't read that part.

Using a layer blend set to Multiply to do the dirt sounds like a good idea. I was using a layer mask for some reason.

The tiles are quite glossy and vivid. They are glazed tiles, and I suspect they keep their colour quite well, but I'll have to do some research about ancient mosaics and see how they age.

Thanks for the feedback.

[ChickPea]

I really want to give this a try. I completely overlooked that there was a Gimp part to the tutorial, so thanks for the info.

I'm glad it's not a huge job to redo the tiles, and yeah, glazed tiles may well hold their colour.

Looking forward to seeing your updates.