First Time GIMPer - Looking for advice/critique

[Zedfelos]

Hello, all!

Very new to the world of fantasy map-making, and wanted to try out a couple of digital mediums. Currently working between Medibang Paint for the sketching on my phone, and GIMP on my computer to arrange layers and put everything together.

Wanted to get everyone's opinions on the rivers I've just added to my coastline. I really like the way the coastline came out, but I feel like the rivers might have too similar of an aesthetic to the coastline to really differentiate them well? I'd also like to see if any of the "River Police" are online, and could give me some pointers about the placements of my rivers.

You'll see two versions of the same map here. One is just the coastline, plus the rivers/lakes. The other is my VERY rough brushing of where I plan to insert mountains, hills, forests, marshes, and a tundra. In that brushing, red=mountains, yellow=hills, green=forests, dark teal=marshes, and light teal=tundra.

Please let me know what you think, and whether you have any pointers on how I might set my rivers apart a little more.

Thanks, guys!

[eepjr24]

On rivers: Rivers almost never split, they join. I see at least 4 places where rivers split that probably need to be fixed. Remember that rivers seek low ground, so if they are in hills they will find the lowest path out of the hills, which is generally equivalent to the shortest path out of the hills (or away from the mountains). The S shaped river in the southwest corner is an example, why does that river not just flow due south to the coast?

The spiral island chain likely needs to be volcanic.

The northern mountain chain probably needs some smaller rivers or a marshland to catch the mountain runoff to the south near the large inlet. The southern mountain chain would probably have more spurs like the northern one does rather than zig zagging.

On setting apart your rivers, I am not sure what you mean, could you elaborate?

The outline is a good start as is planning out your regions ahead of time it really helps you to tie everything together.

- E

[Zedfelos]

Some stuff.

- E

Thank you for your reply! I know I have some work to do ahead of me, and any pointers are appreciated.

So, your concerns about my rivers aren't unwarranted, but I think you may be misunderstanding where some of them begin and end. The only two rivers that *should* be splitting up are the two in the marshlands by the southwestern coast. I wasn't sure how to represent the marshlands aside from branching rivers, so that's all those are supposed to be.

Other than that, I've tried to originate all rivers from hills and/or mountains, running off toward the coast. That southwest river you mentioned is a great point, and I'll likely move that one.

So, from that, I guess I have two other questions: how should I be representing marshlands to differentiate them from, say, a river delta? That way they don't just look like a bunch of splitting rivers. Second, could you clarify what you meant by spurs vs zigzagging?

For setting apart my rivers, I guess I meant to ask if anybody had tricks for GIMP/Medibang they could share that would help the rivers to like more like rivers. Right now, I've used the same brushes for the rivers as I have the coastline, and I feel like that makes the rivers look... flat? I'm not sure how else to describe it.

Again, thanks for taking a look! I'm really new to this, so I'm trying spending a lot of my time just playing with the new tools I have.

[Greason Wolfe]

One thing you can do (and I would highly recommend) is looking through the tutorials section, the first two sticky posts in particular. The first contains a whole load of tutorials for various applications such as GIMP, Illustrator and so on. You will more than likely find something useful there not just for drawing your rivers, but for other elements (mountains, forests, maybe even marshes) as well. The second sticky post pertains to your original question about river placement, discussing common "rules" about how water moves across land, and also touches on some of the more unusual ("rule" breakers) that occur in the real world.

As for the mountains zig zagging and/or having spurs, I can't really elaborate on what E. was trying to say just yet since you've only roughed out their locations and not actually started drawing them in yet.

Lastly, that s-shaped river... It would be fine if those southern hills and mountains extended a little farther to the west. Since water flow is always follows the steepest downward path, there isn't anything inherently wrong with the river as it is, you would just want to be sure that the area between it and the southern coast is "blocked" by higher terrain.

Hope this helps. Its always tough when you first get started, but what you have so far isn't bad, and hopefully you will find something helpful/useful in that tutorials section I pointed towards.

[eepjr24]

Very much agree with GW above. Here are a couple specific tutorials that have helped me a LOT in making regional maps:

This one covers river placement:
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ead.php?t=3822

This one covers building them in GIMP, with some very good information on how to set apart rivers, mountains, general land textures, etc.
https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ead.php?t=1142

On marshes, rivers still do not generally split in them. Marshes form a few different ways, but for the purposes we are looking at there are basically two types. Salt (or coastal) and freshwater. See here for a nice picture of a coastal salt marsh with LOTS of rivers and streams. But the size would probably not show up on the size of map you have here.

http://vudeevudeewiki.blogspot.com/2...landforms.html

For large freshwater wetlands, I am going to ue the everglades as an example. You can find tons of good info about them, but this is a good summary and shows both the natural flow and some of the man made modifications like levees, dikes and canals (those do split and join back). From the scale of your map, this would likely either be represented by a series of rivers draining into one or more lakes and then a single river coming out of the marsh at it's low point to drain to the ocean.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/circ1182/...Everglades.pdf

I have circled in purple all the splits I saw. What I meant for the southern mountains is that they tend to have ridges with spurs coming off of them, like you did in the northern range. The ranges tend to form on the joins of plates which have some variation but will tend to not have radical angles unless they are very new because the grinding smooths those out (this is all my understanding from reading, someone like Waldronate can probably give you a more detailed and nuanced explanation).

TerrainWithRiversAndLakes.jpg

[Greason Wolfe]

Hrm, I assumed those areas were meant to be lakes not river splits. Just didn't get colored in as such. Could be wrong though.

[eepjr24]

Hrm, I assumed those areas were meant to be lakes not river splits. Just didn't get colored in as such. Could be wrong though.

Quite possible now that you mention it. If so, then I retract those comments. =)

- E

[Zedfelos]

Hrm, I assumed those areas were meant to be lakes not river splits. Just didn't get colored in as such. Could be wrong though.

Oh! Yes, those totally are lakes! I guess I could see how you might mistake them for split rivers. I wanted to make it look like they were more naturally flowing lakes. I'll see if I can get them to feel a little more like lakes than split rivers. That's a great takeaway.

Thanks for that one, folks.

[Zedfelos]

These are some amazing references. Wow. Thanks for passing those along.

I've seen Redrobes guide before, but I'm finding that it's a little different in practice. Haha. Still having a blast though.

I especially love the references you posted about marshes.