Ink and Parchment Style Regional Map

[Alecthar]

I was working on translating Ascension's very cool tutorial on making Antique style regional maps over to GIMP, and was having a lot of trouble making things look right (still having trouble, but I'll get there eventually. I think.) I decided to back burner that idea and I took a look at a parchment making tutorial (also designed for Photoshop) and managed to get that working very well in GIMP. In fact, much of in translates directly, but the method of getting those rough edges on the parchment is different. I used Filter -> Map -> Displace to accomplish it, and they do require some follow-up work to eliminate any stray parchment pieces, but I think the effect you end up with looks really great.

After I finished my parchment, I decided it really needed a map on it, so I put this together. Basically all of the techniques I used I borrowed from RobA's tutorial on making Artistic Regional Maps, or from Ascension's tutorial I mentioned earlier. One thing to note is that I'm not aiming for a particularly realistic style here, I've no idea how ink/parchment maps really look, but I think this one's pretty.

This map doesn't have cities, or names for the rivers or mountain ranges, but that's something I'll be putting together for Ink/Parchment Map 2: Electric Boogaloo. I've fallen a bit out of love with the Vinque font I'm using there, but I think it has a certain appeal. The waves to represent the sea I made using the calligraphy tool in Inkscape. I think it works fairly well, but I'm trying to find a good way to make it look a bit more...random is the word I suppose I'm looking for. Perhaps a larger variety in waves (I only did about 4 rows originally, as I was mostly just interested in seeing if it would work) in the original image would help.

Other than naming everything and doing a bit more with the waves, I'm working on my hand-drawn element placement technique, so that I can do the mountain ranges in the next map with the various hand-drawn peaks I've found here on the Guild.

Tell me what you think.

[Steel General]

I think you'd be better served to be more sparse with the wave texture for the seas. As it is now it tends to draw the eye away (for me anyway) from the other portions of the map.

[Alecthar]

I think you'd be better served to be more sparse with the wave texture for the seas. As it is now it tends to draw the eye away (for me anyway) from the other portions of the map.

Yeah, I'm having trouble with saying "water is here" in the ocean areas of the map, without making it look, well, kinda bad. Working on it though. Maybe a nice cloudy layer mask will help clear things up.

Edit: Yeah, or not. When in doubt, make the waves a brush and distribute in a way that looks good. What do you think? I'll make more wavy patterns in GIMP for the brush next time, but how does that work...maybe stylistically is the word I want to use? You get my meaning.

[Ascension]

This one looks much better, now to tweak the outer glows on the text

[Steel General]

Much better, and I second Ascension's comment on the text glow.

[Midgardsormr]

For some improvement on your parchment creation, try this old tut by RobA"
http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=533

You could also try adapting the woodcut seas technique developed by S. John Ross (Ghalev) here: http://www.io.com/~sjohn/uresia-maps.htm

I don't know that anyone's posted a Gimp conversion for that technique yet, but I know it can be done because Helim3 used it for his Domains of Heva map, which can be seen in the Cartographers' Choice forum somewhere.

[Alecthar]

Much better, and I second Ascension's comment on the text glow.

Could you guys be more specific? The ocean ones are, I agree, a bit dark, and the edges too hard. Mostly that's because the solid noise overlay happens to be particularly dark in those spots, though the outline for "Nerath-That-Was" I made darker intentionally to differentiate it a bit. I'm no longer as fond of that now.

As for the parchment...ouch. I thought it looked pretty good, but obviously I'll still be taking a look at RobA's tutorial. In re: woodcut oceans, I've been fooling around with that idea since I saw it in Ascension's tut on antique maps, without much success, but I think I may have found a solution. Or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.

[Ascension]

My thought is that you don't need the outer glow on the text. If you want the ocean labels to be different then use a different font or italics. Other than that I think you're coming along just fine on this.

[Alecthar]

Okay, cool deal. I'm assuming you mean no glow at all, including on the nation names. I was planning on doing a ton more naming and switching fonts around and whatnot anyway, so this will be a good opportunity for that.

I've been looking at the WIP Cora thread, and the map style seems similar to this one in a lot of ways, and he's using what looks like a bit of darkening at the edge of his land area to indicate the transition to water. Would that work at all here?

Oh, and I have a version of the map with hand-drawn mountains I found here on the boards. I'm working on good-looking placement, but even at this stage the image pipe I made out of the mountains has done a cool job.

[Steel General]

Either no glow or a very small one, just enough to "separate it" from the terrain behind it.