My first map.

[pyrandon]

Duvik's advice is very good & he's right: this is a great first shot!

I'm not a GIMP user, so I can't be specific ina ctions, but I think the best and first improvement is dropping the neon, bright color scheme. (Especially in a pulpy adventure, which generally has a moody undertone.) Either recolor or play with the color saturation & hue (not sure how in GIMP, but in Photoshop it's under the Image>Adjustments pulldown menu).

I think you'll be really happy with even this one change.

Oh, and be sure to post updates as you work so we can see & help with your progress.

Take care!

[crazybear]

Thanks for the tips guys so far guys. Okay, I made some changes to the grass. I added a texture made from a picture of grass, and used a much different pale green color. Let me know what you think.

Next, I could use some advice on how to transition the different areas. How would you transition from the grass to the water, or from the water to the dock, or from the grass to the road. Any help is apprecaited!

[ravells]

Thanks for the tips guys so far guys. Okay, I made some changes to the grass. I added a texture made from a picture of grass, and used a much different pale green color. Let me know what you think.

Next, I could use some advice on how to transition the different areas. How would you transition from the grass to the water, or from the water to the dock, or from the grass to the road. Any help is apprecaited!

Looking good so far, crazybear. A commonly used method to transition between different areas is to add a faint, dark outer glow. That makes the land 'stand off' the water a little bit. I used one in the 'Seven Dials' entry for the coastline and for the roads. I also used an outer glow to make the text labels stand out. Hope this helps.

Another Alternative is to use a brush with variable pressure, which I again used on the coastline of the 7 dials. It's not very apparent but if you zoom into the map and look at the coastline outline carefully, you will see that at some points the outline almost disappears - you can see this at Gosport Harbour on the Seven Dials map.

One word of caution, beware repeating textures for organic fills because if one can see the tiling of the texture it really takes away from the effect. The grass fill on your map has this problem a little bit, but it's easily fixed. Just use a clone brush (not sure if Gimp has one) to mix up the texture a little bit and break up the repetitive edges.

Ravs

[RobA]

One word of caution, beware repeating textures for organic fills because if one can see the tiling of the texture it really takes away from the effect. The grass fill on your map has this problem a little bit, but it's easily fixed. Just use a clone brush (not sure if Gimp has one) to mix up the texture a little bit and break up the repetitive edges.

I agree - a nice start!

One way to get rid of the pattern artifacts (in the grass layer) is to apply a high pass filter effect (using the following steps)

1. duplicate the grass layer
2. gaussian blur the new layer
3. invert the blurred layer
4. desaturate the now inverted, blurred layer
4. switch layer mode to overlay
5. play with the opacity if required
6. merge down
7. adjust levels (if desired)

Try it to see how it works. Depending on the blur radius, the effect will vary.

-Rob A>

[crazybear]

Hey guys! Thanks for the advice. When I get home tonight, or maybe tomorrow, I'll follow your advice and post the results. Thanks again!

[crazybear]

As I said before, thank you both RobA and ravells, I followed both pieces of advice. I must say, I really like how the shadows make the map look. Take a look and let me know what you think.

After I did your trick RobA, I also used the lasso selection tool too select random areas of my texture, then copied and pasted them into other areas to break up the repeating pattern. Hopefully, you can't tell it was a repeating pattern now.

[ravells]

Nice work! Could I suggest as a next step that you change the black in your picture to a dark grey...I believe it might help.

Ravs