Ink and Parchment Style Regional Map
I was working on translating Ascension's very cool tutorial on making Antique style regional maps over to GIMP, and was having a lot of trouble making things look right (still having trouble, but I'll get there eventually. I think.) I decided to back burner that idea and I took a look at a parchment making tutorial (also designed for Photoshop) and managed to get that working very well in GIMP. In fact, much of in translates directly, but the method of getting those rough edges on the parchment is different. I used Filter -> Map -> Displace to accomplish it, and they do require some follow-up work to eliminate any stray parchment pieces, but I think the effect you end up with looks really great.
After I finished my parchment, I decided it really needed a map on it, so I put this together. Basically all of the techniques I used I borrowed from RobA's tutorial on making Artistic Regional Maps, or from Ascension's tutorial I mentioned earlier. One thing to note is that I'm not aiming for a particularly realistic style here, I've no idea how ink/parchment maps really look, but I think this one's pretty.
This map doesn't have cities, or names for the rivers or mountain ranges, but that's something I'll be putting together for Ink/Parchment Map 2: Electric Boogaloo. I've fallen a bit out of love with the Vinque font I'm using there, but I think it has a certain appeal. The waves to represent the sea I made using the calligraphy tool in Inkscape. I think it works fairly well, but I'm trying to find a good way to make it look a bit more...random is the word I suppose I'm looking for. Perhaps a larger variety in waves (I only did about 4 rows originally, as I was mostly just interested in seeing if it would work) in the original image would help.
Other than naming everything and doing a bit more with the waves, I'm working on my hand-drawn element placement technique, so that I can do the mountain ranges in the next map with the various hand-drawn peaks I've found here on the Guild.
Tell me what you think.
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