My first maps

[blackflamingo777]

I'm finally going to make my first post here! I've been a member for a couple of weeks following tutorials trying my hand at both GIMP and mapmaking for the first time. I've attempted drawing maps by hand on graph paper before, but could never get them to look right. So it's really nice to be able to make awesome looking maps without having to free-hand draw basically anything! So these are my maps. What do you think so far?


This is my current project. I've manged to get this far only using RobA's "Creating old, weathered paper using the Gimp" tutorial. I'm very proud of how it's going so far. The only real problem that I've run into is finding a way to make the cliffs that run along the coastline behind the mountains. I'm also completely stumped on how to depict the coral reefs that encircle the island. The only thing I can think of is just lines set to hard light or overlay.


This is my current layout for the legend, I'm still not entirely sure how I'm going to fit it in there...


This is my first map using RobA's "Using GIMP to Create an Artistic Regional RPG Map" method with arsheesh's "Making Photo-realistic Trees in GIMP". I also used a different tutorial for the Mountains, but I don't remember which one. As you can tell it didn't really go over well and I've decided that the style isn't right for it.


This is a randomly created map also using RobA and arsheesh's tutorials. I also made the Mountains based off the Tree tutorial. Please ignore the badly-made MS Paint Compass. XD

[jtougas]

That looks really good and the compass is nice as well. As far as the coral goes I think your on the right track with a layer of lines on overlay with maybe some kind of gravel texture. Good luck and have some rep for your first post

[jtougas]

I came up with this for a coral look. Its two layers set to overlay at about 40% opacity with a leather texture and a couple passes of white at about 35% opacity with a large brush to make it look like the water was shallow. I did this in GIMP and the coral layers are on top of the island as I used your jpg post. Obviously if you did this you'd want to put it under your island. I hope this helps
Island-S-2-4-1.jpg

[blackflamingo777]

I'm actually trying to put the coral on the first map. This is my current attempt a coral. I made a layer filled with the cracks pattern and one with the dried mud pattern and made bump maps out of them. Then I airbrushed over it. I'm not sure if it fits the style of the map, but it'll work for now.

[Diamond]

That's actually pretty good looking coral. The only thing I'd do is maybe reduce the opacity on it, make it a bit more subtle. My only other nitpick is that there seems like there's too much contrast between the color of the coastline and the color of the mountain/tree outlines. Maybe pick a color halfway in between the red-brown of the coast and the black of the mt/tree icons and use it for both? Black would be too harsh to use as the coast outline color, so I think you're on the right track using something more subtle there. Awesome work so far though; I like the dual legend/key boxes along the side. Have some rep for sharing your first maps here!