A woodland village map

[NateVz]

This is my first fully digital map, and I made it using Fantastic Maps basic 'how to make a map' tutorial. It was made in Gimp 2.8 with my (newish) Wacom Intuos tablet. I certainly welcome feedback! Admittedly, I didn't consider the layout and geography all that well, but just wanted to fool around with digital techniques as a bit of practice to develop my skills.
I don't have labels on this version because I wanted to keep it open to any use as an RPG encounter map that others might benefit from. I'll likely add labels at some point in the future.
wooded village medium.png

[Josiah VE]

A few years ago when I was still drawing maps by hand I watched some of your mapmaking videos.

I also started out digital mapping with Fantastic Map's tutorial, just about the same as you, not thinking about the layout of geography, just testing it out. Good job! It looks wonderful.

[Troedel]

I like your map, great result for first time digital. I've got to nitpicks to mention. The treeoutline feels a bit thick to me. That's something I always struggle with myself, linethickness and the relation of lines. Second thing is the green of the ground. It has a slight neon touch. That happens often to me when painting on a color layer over a value layer(b/w), something mentioned by Torstan of fantastic maps in one of his tutorials. Requires some fiddling. Otherwise a village I would like to visit in play
Keep mapping!

[Paul Johnson]

I love it. The parchment paper edging adds to the effects nicely. I might consider adding to the waterfall a bit to set it off from the (presumably) calmer waters of the rest of the river. Maybe some more white in the blue and a mist effect of some sort to indicate the water pouring into the pond.

[NateVz]

Great advice. Thank you!

[J.Edward]

I think it looks quite nice Nate.
It looks like you will be developing some fine skills and should have some nice maps to see soon.

[Bogie]

Nice map Nate, thanks for sharing.

[arsheesh]

A wonderful first effort! Also, just a heads up, you may have noticed that GIMP 2.8 only has limited tablet support. For instance you can't use the pressure sensitivity features of your Wacom tablet with it. This is an issue that the GIMP development team is working on resolving for the release of GIMP 2.10, whenever that occurs. I'm a GIMP user myself, but in the mean time I've been using the Photoshop Elements 10 program that came pre-packaged with my own Intuos. Another option worth exploring however might be the free painting application Krita. It's a really powerful free application with full tablet support (I plan on learning it myself one of these days).

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[NateVz]

A wonderful first effort! Also, just a heads up, you may have noticed that GIMP 2.8 only has limited tablet support. For instance you can't use the pressure sensitivity features of your Wacom tablet with it. This is an issue that the GIMP development team is working on resolving for the release of GIMP 2.10, whenever that occurs. I'm a GIMP user myself, but in the mean time I've been using the Photoshop Elements 10 program that came pre-packaged with my own Intuos. Another option worth exploring however might be the free painting application Krita. It's a really powerful free application with full tablet support (I plan on learning it myself one of these days).

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

Actually pressure sensitivity works fine in Gimp 2.8! I used it with both pressure opacity and line thickness in various parts of this map. Here's a short tutorial that helped me when I was setting it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQl6ZQFDiJ4