Azala Eschanron (Proof of concept/learning the ropes)

[plamadude30k]

For the past week or so, I've been tinkering around with RobA's awesome Gimp tutorial, playing with settings, and trying to improve on some of the basic steps (if that's possible). I have a few preliminary maps for a fantasy novel I'm planning on writing already done, but I felt that I could learn more by making a map from scratch without restrictions. I mostly followed the tutorial, but I modified several things:

1) The coastline generation. I generate a smooth coastline, then do a couple of displacement maps on it in radial coordinates. I find this generates much more satisfactory coastlines (also generates small islands, depending on the settings).

2) The seashore (the light water around the coasts)--I'm not actually sure what I did here, I just played with it until it looked okay. I'm very open to suggestions on how to improve this, as I feel it is one of the weakest points of my maps.

3) The "Dirt Layer." For some reason, I can never get it to look as good as he does in the tutorial. Again, I just played around until I got something passable. I would really appreciate suggestions on how to vary base terrain textures and colors.

Okay, so now that the preamble is done, let's see the map(s):



The first is the blank, the second contains geographical information, and the third contains cities and towns. I would appreciate any advice or suggestions, but especially stuff on forests and rivers. I never feel entirely satisfied with those.