First Map: Ascension(ish) Style!

[arsheesh]

Ah yes, that's because the "forests" in my map are actually the "hills" in the tutorial: see Steps 10 and 23-30 for details on how to do this. Also, as Ascension pointed out to me, my forests were not quite dark enough, so I added an extra "Hill Color" layer (with the "Hill Outline" layer mask attached). I chose a dark green color for this layer (274204), set the Opacity of the layer to 65%, and set the Layer Mode to "Soft Light." You may want to play with these settings a bit to see what works best for your map.

Cheers,

- Arsheesh

[arsheesh]

Well, I think the end is finally in sight. I still have to place villages and ruins within "Eriond" and perhaps do a bit of touch up work. I tried to differentiate natural vs. man made geographical features by using different colors. I wanted the city names to be more prominent than the names given to the terrain itself. That said,I think perhaps that some of the terrain names may have turned out a little too obscure. I'm not sure. Any thoughts?

[arsheesh]

Alright, I think I've finally landed on a border style that I'm satisfied with. Initially I had intended to add decorative border ends, but after playing around with it a bit I ended up deciding that: (a) they were a bit of a distraction from the map itself, and: (b) they didn't look good enough to compensate for this distraction. I think that this style helps showcase the map a little better-the black seems to punch out the colors of the map rather than to compete with them. Best of all, while its been Arsheesh tested, iit's wife approved! Not that it was a big deal for her to begin with, but hey, glad to know that I have the support of my better half (who is also an interior designer/architect and knows quite a bit about art). Now the only thing left to do is name those roads and rivers. Heck, I might just finish this map before the start of my next semester of school after all.

Cheers,

-Arsheesh

[moutarde]

It's looking really great so far, I think your forests are some of the best I've seen. Some of the terrain labels are kind of hard to read, like the Kellanen Heights, and the northern Glendor Forest. You could try strengthening the outline of those labels, and leaving the fill fairly transparent. That should keep those labels from having the punch of the city labels, but still keep them from straining the eyes

[arsheesh]

Thanks for the advice Moutarde, I'll give it a try. As to the forests, I'm glad that you like them but the credit ought to go to Ascension and Gidde-they are the ones that developed the method that I have appropriated for my map.

Cheers,

-Arsheesh

[arsheesh]

Please Help! I am almost finished, but have run into a snag with what is seemingly an embarrassingly easy task; that is, creating a Scale. I would like to create a simple scale two rows high and four columns wide to represent distance (miles or leagues, something like that). I'd place it right underneath the compass rose. Yet I can't seem to figure out how to do this in GIMP. For those of you GIMP (or Photoshiop) users out there, is there any way to do this using Raster based software alone (e.g. without importing the image from another vector program)? Also, any other feedback on the current image is appreciated.

Cheers,

-Arsheesh

[Jaxilon]

Well, if you are lost you might download this little script someone created for making the scale legend. I used it on my challenge entry for January and it did alright. If nothing else you can create one that you can then modify.

Map Scale Legend

Hope that helps.

[moutarde]

Well, its not really much of a technique, but the last time I drew a scale, I first figured out how much distance a pixel represented, then zoomed waaaay in and drew a zig zag line with a 1px brush to count out the number of pixels I needed to represent one bar of distance, then used the rectangle tool to draw a box that long. Then I just duplicated the box and filled out the scale...

[Jaxilon]

Sheesh, I think I'd go blind if I started counting pixels.

There is a measurement tool for that. It's in the Tool Box or just "Shift+M", click starting pixel and drag to wherever and along the bottom it tells you how many pixels.

[moutarde]

Pixels aren't *that* small when you're zoomed in 1600% But I'm sure the measuring tool is much efficient