The Bour River Valley WIP

[AlexTna]

Hello everyone! This is my second map following draklingrisen's tutorial "Artistic Maps in GIMP". Sadly i could not finish it as nicely as my first map ( who had only minor mistakes due to tiredness). I tried drawing a coastal map but had no experience with water and delimitation's etc. In retrospect i believe i should have created a water layer and play around with that, but it was too late when i thought of that, so i had to skip some steps in the tutorial, add a layer, played around with the opacity of different layers to at least get a decent looking map. I could not recreate the nice, old canvas look i made the first time (and the technique in the tutorial) because of the blue water on my Background (sketch) layer. Usually it should have been deleted so as to get a white layer, that's why in the finished map you can still see the sketch marks of roads, mountains and rivers. Anyway i think i will figure this out (using more water layers probably), what i want to hear from you are other points and mistakes i have done, that i can't judge by myself. Also bear in mind that i am completely new to the software, so "high tech" solutions could be too difficult for me.
Looking forward to critique and pointers!

[Ascension]

I have to say that I like the second one better. A little blocky like the old old Ultima games but I kind of dig that in a way.

[jfrazierjr]

Hmmm... I am wondering why you would have issues with the water vs canvas texture...It's all a bit of layer management and "draw" order of the layers in use. Of course, I don't know what the exact issue is you were having so can't really give much advice for you. I would like to see less blockiness in the mountains, but since i have not read the tutorial, that might be how it's supposed to be(and of course this is a fairly fast means of getting a map down).

[AlexTna]

Well the problem is i have only 3-4 days experience in GIMP and without a tutorial i am lost, so i don't know a great deal about layer management. But I am making new test maps so i get used to the program, I will go back to the map once I am more accustomed to GIMP.
About the mountains, darklingrisen's tutorial is about that style of map-making, not realistic (to scale etc). But what do you mean by the blockiness of the mountains? Are they too big, because I have thought about reducing the brush size when making mountains, but really have not decided yet. Looking back they do seem a bit too big and maybe too many, they take up a good deal of the map! Anyway thank you for the answers!

[jfrazierjr]

Well the problem is i have only 3-4 days experience in GIMP and without a tutorial i am lost, so i don't know a great deal about layer management. But I am making new test maps so i get used to the program, I will go back to the map once I am more accustomed to GIMP.

Even if it's not they style you are going for, I would highly suggest checking out several of the tutorials, specifically RobA's Regional Map tutorial as it uses a large number of layers which must be in the right order to make things look correct.

About the mountains, darklingrisen's tutorial is about that style of map-making, not realistic (to scale etc). But what do you mean by the blockiness of the mountains? Are they too big, because I have thought about reducing the brush size when making mountains, but really have not decided yet. Looking back they do seem a bit too big and maybe too many, they take up a good deal of the map! Anyway thank you for the answers!

Sorry about that... what I meant is that the bottoms of most of the mountains have an flat line of color demarcating the mountain from the underlying land color. Don't be afraid to have some of the color "randomly" come down lower than then end of your line work for each mountain. Of course, this means you have to take care as you are building your brush files so you have that room at the bottom to play with.

[AlexTna]

Ok guys I think i finally figured out my earlier problem with coastlines/water. I began work on a new map (some 6 hours ago) consisting of an island. I added a water layer, copied the outlines of the island in that layer also (had another idea, but stuck to this one) and from there on I didn't have a great deal of problems. I still don't know why there are some "stripes" near some of my place names, they just appear when I put the text on a Path. Another unsolved problem is the curios case of the cities. In the tutorial the houses sort of "stick" together, I mean the house in front blocks the view to some part of that from behind it, but in my case they just partially overlap so i have to put them a bit further away from each other. Also i can't paint them like i do with the rest of my brushes , have to do it manually. Another thing I seem to do is put text too close to objects on the map and after my technique for place names is finished, i see i obstruct the view of some objects, but this has to do with me not being experienced.

In the last 2 days I have come up with 2 continents for my world map, and I try to do smaller regional maps for it (Like the one in my first post) until i learn to do different styles of maps and am more experienced. I will attach the maps, including the "world map", but please note that I am currently not working on the "world map"(and never mind those flowers, i was just testing some brushes), its just for orientation now, so I am eager for pointers and comments on the "artistic style maps".
I will continue to do some minor regional maps until i feel confident enough to remake my initial map. Hope I am not being too rude to post such a wall of text and ask so much of you, but I have a few days off and am extremely exited about the things I learned from here.
Edit: The Hills brushes, the brushes for the church, broken bridge and "stonehenge-like" structure + the different flower brushes are not made by me. I have downloaded them from various sites, and they where free to use. Even so, if anyone recognizes his/her brushes and wants credit or wants them removed, please contact me.
Edit2: Played around a bit with the island map, wanted to make the water also a shade of brown/tan (like in old old maps) but by accident discovered a method of making realistic looking deltas/mangrove forests/any other formation of small river channels . Contact for info, its the one labeled "Island of Piron old".

[arsheesh]

You are doing the right thing by posting your trial and error pieces. I am not familiar with the style you are working with, nor the tutorial that you got it form, so I'm afraid I can't offer up much in the way of advice, however I'm sure others will be. In any case, the best way to learn to use GIMP is simply to read up on the software and then mess around with it. Using this tutorial for a few trial runs should help you become more familiar with the software, and with some map-making techniques. I'd also encourage you to try out a couple other tutorials so that you can learn other techniques as well. Keep up the good work man, and here's a bit of rep to set you on your way.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[AlexTna]

Yes i have seen the thin line on the base of most of my mountains, will begin work on a newer and improved mountains and hills brush (i have read a few tutorials in the meanwhile) but for now I am concentrating on other aspects of my "mapping", using other brushes until then ( Gidde's brushes mostly).
About RobA's tutorial, i have read it (it was the first i tried) and will try it again soon, just wanted to become a little bit proficient in darklingrisen's art of fantasy off-scale mapping. I will post a map in a new style in the coming days ( i have 4-5 hand drawn sketches to get inspired from, still beeing upset not to have bought a scanner when I still had the funds)
I have also used smaller mountain and forest brush sizes in my latest wip, trying to gradually get away from the "fantasy book kind of cartoonish map" style to a more up to scale and realistic style.

[AlexTna]

Hello again, I have sketched on paper a town placed in my previous maps and have some problems working on them on the PC. I did not want to make a new thread in the respective forum because its related to the previous map and I only need some help. Problem is I do not have a scanner so i photographed the sketch, it's not very clear and I don't know how to use only its "black lines" and not additional fuzz etc. I have attached the sketch, can any of you guys tell me how to begin work on it or if it is simpler in other software besides GIMP and does not take too much time if someone would be kind to help me.
Anyways thank you in advance and hoping for some tips.

[jfrazierjr]

I would suggest setting this on a later over top of another one(preferably a layer with some color underneath for some contrast). You can then set the layer to multiple which would merge down the dark colors and the "white" will disappear... Then you can "ink" the lines on a new layer ABOVE that one by tracing the outlines.

Another option is to use the fuzzy select tool set to multiple selections and then stroke the selection, but this may not work very since you have already put in some "texture" (those scratchy lines)