Okay, I think I'm pretty much done with the physical geography portion of this map. Here it is:

21 Physical.jpg

I added the fertile river valley and the high mountain plateau, and adjusted the coloring of the transition band. I also added a bump map to the ocean floors and did the coastline stroke like Robb suggested in his tutorial.

All in all, I'm quite happy with this map. I've learned quite a bit about GIMP and about map making:
  • Like Rob pointed out, I need to keep map scale in mind when drawing rivers to keep from making them too curvy.
  • Similarly, I think I need to work on my mountain placement. The width of the central North-South range in particular just looks regular for my tastes.
  • I like the two-step elevation process I played around with here, and I have a few ideas of how to play around with that in the future.
  • I kind of like the canyons in the southwest - I need to play around with the idea a bit more to refine it though.
  • I like the three bands of ground color, and imagine it could be expanded to include a tundra and an icy band as well.
  • I also like the two different colors of mountain.
  • I really like the way using plasma clouds affects the forests.


A huge thanks to Rob for the tutorial, and for everyone who's commented thus far. Next time I have a chance to sit down and tinker, I'm going to start with the political geography aspects of the map.