Your map is pleasing to the eye and I think you have a good knack for this. I think the mountain style is a bit odd though. We don't have any mountains here in Florida, yet I find your mountains strangely familiar.
This is my first serious attempt at creating a map in the Gimp - following (parts of) the Tutorial by RobA
It's not entirely done yet, missing some city names and such.
Specifically, could I get any advice on rivers? How do I figure out where they're supposed to go?
Best wishes,
Alfar
Your map is pleasing to the eye and I think you have a good knack for this. I think the mountain style is a bit odd though. We don't have any mountains here in Florida, yet I find your mountains strangely familiar.
First off.. Welcome Aboard!
Overall not bad for a first attempt at RobA's tutorial. The mountains are usually what seems to get most people (I know it did me - several times ). I think they need to be a bit darker - they look a bit like clouds.
I'll second Immolate on the color scheme - very pleasing to the eye.
Have some 'rep' for uploading it in your very first post *bonk*
My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...
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Thank you very much, both of you. I tried making the mountains darker by duplicating the overlay and whacking up the opacity - Not too bad, I think, and definately better, no?
Edit:I just realized that the colors on my external monitor are much darker than on my laptop, so the mountains weren't nearly as light in the Gimp (external monitor) as they displayed in my browser (laptop screen) - bah.
Last edited by Alfar; 06-02-2009 at 04:23 PM.
There are two threads that talk about river placement, entitled "How to get your rivers in the right place" and "Essential river guidelines for mapping."
Between the two of them, those threads contain most of the collected wisdom on rivers that has been posted here.
Bryan Ray, visual effects artist
http://www.bryanray.name
Thanks... I'd already been skimming through the large one, but need to study it more closely - and try out some of that software, I suppose.
Wilbur looks interesting with its new features for finding rivers, I reckon.
So, I decided to pretty much start over, reusing only the basic outline of the island. I did some experimenting with Wilbur to get rivers and heights closer to what I wanted, and used the height map extensively in the rest of my Gimp work.
New type of forest, rivers. Decided that I kinda like the outline around the coastline. The water isn't quite right, but figured I'd throw up a work in progress for now.
Yet another iteration. Everything is better now, I think.
I agree, very nice. Don't take this the wrong way but I'd throw out the swamps and forests...don't really need them. The mountains still need some work but I don't know enough about Gimp to help ya.
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Those rivers are stupid awesome, how'd you go about putting those together?
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