I currently feel more like a painter then a carthographer... The texture in the south was still in the area i didnt get to yet but i changed it so it doesnt distract .
If there were some trick on the moutains i'd be more then happy to share it but I'm afraid they are all handpainted In general I use the ISO-style mountain trick (tutorial on the forums) but use multiple colors and a texture. (I can post some wip-sequence-pictures to see how i do it, if you like)
I'll add the foothills to my to-do list as the hill/mountain contrast is indeed a bit odd.
Furthermore I started experimenting with the forrest style. Needs tweaking but I'm getting there I think. Maybe not enough progress for another WIP picture but here's one anyway
Definite improvement. Trees are a little bright but look pretty good. Looking nice overall. Love your scroll.
M
I am glad my technique (rough though the tutorial was.. I look at it now and go...ugh!) has helped others make such lovely maps. I can't take credit for this originally though, I got it from the artist of the Manrathia (featured maps) map who has several tutorials on his website. Quite frankly, smudge is my favorite tool if I am going for a more painterly style map and is one of the most useful tools for any cartographer trying to blend terrain.
My Finished Maps
Works in Progress(or abandoned tests)
My Tutorials:
Explanation of Layer Masks in GIMP
How to create ISO Mountains in GIMP/PS using the Smudge tool
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Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
thanks all for the nice comments! Really great having people around here looking at each inch of your map. I resized the labels as they indeed were way too big. They're still large but i think better now. Also tried to restyle the cities a bit as Ascension pointed out. I'm no iso-master but they are a bit better now. guess i'm gonne call this a finished map