The Garnok region of Baldimar

[jfrazierjr]

Soo... was just playing around during lunch and added a very small number of hills and a couple of mountains.... will play with this some more as time permits....

[torstan]

That's the trick. I'd think about toning down that texture a little, but that's purely a matter of taste and would be a call you'd probably want to make after the whole map had been done.

I'd suggest possibly making your clouds a little more turbulent at small scales so that the varying light/shade on the canopy is a little more suggestive of small trees. Possibly another layer of clouds over the top of your current one with the turbulence turned right up but with low opacity. Rob mentioned a better filter than the standard gimp one, which might be worth it as the standard one is a bit gridded.

[torstan]

Those mountains are lovely. Nice work.

[Karro]

Those mountains are lovely. Nice work.

An accurate analysis. I concur!

[jfrazierjr]

Ok.. a bit more putzing around... added a torn paper background....

[Ascension]

That's a very nice looking image. The hilly bits are great but my eye keeps wanting to apply some sort of hand-drawn, quasi-ISO pattern fill for the forest...draw up a rather large forest full of trees and cut up some chunks to make a pattern out of. Then you can reuse over and over and erase the edges of the shape to fit the trees...or just make it into a brush instead of a pattern.

My 2 bits.

[torstan]

I agree that a little more detail in the forest wouldn't go amiss, however it really depends on what scale you are going to read the map at.

I'd recommend playing with blending modes to integrate the colours into the map. I generally duplicate every colour layer. The bottom of the two layers is set to overlay. The upper layer is normal at 50% opacity. I do this for outline lines too. It helps with the hand-drawn watercolour feel.

Looking great - and that is a very nice parchment background.

[jfrazierjr]

That's a very nice looking image. The hilly bits are great but my eye keeps wanting to apply some sort of hand-drawn, quasi-ISO pattern fill for the forest...draw up a rather large forest full of trees and cut up some chunks to make a pattern out of. Then you can reuse over and over and erase the edges of the shape to fit the trees...or just make it into a brush instead of a pattern.

My 2 bits.

I agree that a little more detail in the forest wouldn't go amiss, however it really depends on what scale you are going to read the map at.

I'd recommend playing with blending modes to integrate the colours into the map. I generally duplicate every colour layer. The bottom of the two layers is set to overlay. The upper layer is normal at 50% opacity. I do this for outline lines too. It helps with the hand-drawn watercolour feel.

Looking great - and that is a very nice parchment background.

Thanks guys. At this point, I don't want to get into individual drawn trees, perhaps for another project. And I want to be careful to not use textures that make this say "this is computer generated". This all started when I created a selection, stroked it, and then ran a displacement filter on during lunch. I liked the look of the line so darn much (the smudge, the variable thickness, etc) that I threw some color into it to make a forest canopy. Then you guys gave me some advice, so I dropped down some mountains (and will be adding more). Then everyone said the canvas was too over-powering and I had been wanting to do an old paper style map, soooooo...... here it is.

I plan to bring the mountains up most of the side of the forest and.... I have no idea from there... Perhaps make a second mountain chain below the first with a largish pass between the two... I will also play around with some textures to see if I can get something a bit more tree-like without messing up the feel I think I am heading toward.

[torstan]

Well its looking great for something that started out as a lunch time doodle! definitely interested to see where this goes to.

On a side note, I'd be worried for anyone that did a google search for the tag you placed on this thread. Pulp fiction has a lot to answer for.

[jfrazierjr]

Well its looking great for something that started out as a lunch time doodle! definitely interested to see where this goes to.

Thanks!! I am sure you know that I am interested in trying your mapping style, so after I put in the color, I wanted to figure out a quick way to get some (for lack of a better word) "lines" into it. So I stroked the outline with high jitter and the confetti brush(followed by displace)... as you can see... I don't like that anymore. Question I have for you.... do you manually create all those little squiggly lines when you do your forest or is there a trick I am missing out on?

On a side note, I'd be worried for anyone that did a google search for the tag you placed on this thread. Pulp fiction has a lot to answer for.