I come presenting a couple maps for your viewing and critique. The reason I came to this forum was that I was trying (and by my standards, failing) to create a word map for a game I'm DMing. The first map I present will be the map I created before I found this website. The second map is the product of working on (but not quite finishing) RobA's tutorial on "Using GIMP to Create an Artistic Regional RPG Map."

There are a lot of things that I like about my first map, and a lot more that I realize need some work. Some things that I like about this map are its general style (or at least, the style I wanted it to look like in my mind), and the layout of the continents and landforms (although it needs more forests). I like that there are different looks to the mountains in different areas, and would like to preserve that, and possibly something similar with the forests and deserts. Also, I plan on keeping the shape of the continents pretty much the same.

Click image for larger version.  Name: worldMapGeography1.jpg  Views: 233  Size: 141.1 KB  ID: 9407

The biggest problem with this map is its image quality. I noticed almost immediately when I started working on it that the quality was not high enough, but had no idea then how to fix that (higher ppi). Getting into actual problems with the map though, I don't like many of the colors of this map. It may not even be the color so much as the lack of any texture on land or in the sea. I'd need a lot more pleasing way to do both of these. There has to be some way to add artistic texture to land (doing foothills especially) that I can learn. Also, my forests and deserts both need a LOT of work, and I'm not sure what type of style I'm going to do those in. Also, the polar regions were done before I had any knowledge of layer masks, so those can easily be re-worked to look better. I'm going to almost completely re-work this map eventually, but it's an acceptable starting point. I'll count this as my rough sketch.


I learned a lot from working on this next map. I love how my coastlines look, and the random mixing of the grass and dirt is really cool. These are two things that I think I could bring into my final product eventually. The TLS technique is really useful, and invaluable to learn, and the ability to create bump maps will definitely come in handy. Thanks RobA for making this tutorial. I'll get around to finishing this map eventually.

Click image for larger version.  Name: practiceMap1.jpg  Views: 220  Size: 907.2 KB  ID: 9408

I don't however really like the overall style of this map as much as the more hand-drawn approach, however. This might be mostly because I had a really hard time getting the mountains to look anything like mountains (I still don't really think they look like mountains...). RobA's example was so much better in the tutorial. Mine seem to stand out as being very wrong on this map, as they don't seem to realistically fit into the texture of the rest of the map.

While I've seen people here talking about how they created a map out of the history of some region they've been playing in a game, I seem to work in the opposite direction. I can create a map, and then based on it a history and political situation seems to fall into place. So, I'd love to get a world map whipped up before I get to deep into my new campaign. This shouldn't be too much of a problem, considering I have four months until the next adventure (most of which will be taken up by school work, but some of which will include cartography).

Since I've got some time, I'm going to muck about in a few different styles, and try out some other tutorials. I'd like to be able to find a style that fits my world map, and progresses nicely to city and building maps. I'd love any comments, criticisms and especially pointers. Thanks so much.