# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Regional/World Mapping >  The Garnok region of Baldimar

## jfrazierjr

So.. I was messing around today at work during lunch and playing with some filters and effects in GIMP.   What do you guys think of this forests?  I especially like the "smear" on the forest edge near the bottom of the map.   Pay no attention to the horrible tree trunks as I was using a trackball and could not draw straight with it, but I wanted something to get an idea of how it might look.

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## torstan

I don't quite see what you mean by the smear you mention. Can you elaborate?

It's looking good. I'd suggest moving the drop shadow to just below the forest rather than a universal all around glow. I'd also suggest darkening the vertical edge of the trees. At the moment the canopy looks like a flat layer on top of the trunks. You need to give it body. You could do this by having the pen texture just on the edges towards the viewer, or by running a darker green brush around the bottom edges.

Nevertheless, good stuff so far.

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## jfrazierjr

> I don't quite see what you mean by the smear you mention. Can you elaborate?


  Ah fudge... I screenshoted this instead of exporting at full res from the original file.  It's kind of hard to see at 100%, but if you zoom in more, you should be able to see the smudges near the highest part of the outline and also mid way or so on the bottom edge.   Of course, it's a bit harder to see the one on the bottom with the shadow....





> It's looking good. I'd suggest moving the drop shadow to just below the forest rather than a universal all around glow.


Done




> I'd also suggest darkening the vertical edge of the trees. At the moment the canopy looks like a flat layer on top of the trunks. You need to give it body. You could do this by having the pen texture just on the edges towards the viewer, or by running a darker green brush around the bottom edges.


hmmm.. not sure how what you mean.   This is the first time I have seriously tried anything that "looks" hand drawn and it kind of came about it on accident.   I was actually playing around trying to put my own twist on your Dreeston region map.   I included the xcf file in case you feel like showing me what you mean....

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## Ghostman

Nice forest. I'd apply some texture pattern to the canopy if I were you, but it can look fine without one. If you want/don't mind perfectly straight tree trunks, here is a trick that could save you a lot of time and work:

1. Create a small image of vertical stripes (the trunks) that extend from the top of the image to the bottom of it, so that it can work as a tiling pattern. Save it as a GIMP pattern file in the folder where your GIMP is set to look for patterns.

2. In the map image, make a new layer called "trunks" or w/e. Apply a pattern-fill to this layer with the pattern you created in step 1 (you'll need to close and restart GIMP first). Create a black mask for this layer.

3. Make a selection of the forest canopy on what ever layer you have it, switch to edit the mask of the trunks layer, and fill the selection with white.

4. Float the selection and move it some distance down (depending on how long you wish the trunks to be).

Now you should have a neat 'outline' of trunks visible below the canopy, in similar manner as a drop-shadow would be. Of corse, you'll need to keep the canopy layer above the trunks layer for this to work as intended.

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## Steel General

I love the colors, but I agree that the canopy needs something, it looks a bit "flat".

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## torstan

Yep, I'll take a shot at this. One way to deal with that canopy question is to set the size of the fuzzy brush you are colouring with to be smaller. Then the colour variation will be more on the scale of what we would expect of the trees.

As for the canopy edges, I'll see what I can pull together tomorrow morning.

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## jfrazierjr

> Yep, I'll take a shot at this. One way to deal with that canopy question is to set the size of the fuzzy brush you are colouring with to be smaller. Then the colour variation will be more on the scale of what we would expect of the trees.
> 
> As for the canopy edges, I'll see what I can pull together tomorrow morning.



Heh.. actually.. i am not using brushes at all except to stroke the outline and to make the trunks...

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## torstan

I see that now.

Right, here's a quick edit:


I've included the .xcf so you can see what I did:
Forest.zip

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## jfrazierjr

Ok... I moved the shadow to the other side, added some highlights to the right/top and low lights to the left/bottom.   I also added a canvas texture overlay just for the heck of it.

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## Karro

I think the highlights and shadows addressed what the others alluded to.

I can't say I dig the canvas texture, as yet.

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## jfrazierjr

Urgh... been WAY to long since I worked on this.  Minor update... added a bit more noise texture to the water (whitish highlights) and changed the cliff to run the entire length of the upper mountain area.  Could use a bit more playing with the cliff itself, but this is what I got completed in the short time I had available.

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## Karro

This is minor, but I noticed some of the white coloration from the northern mountains discolors the black background behind the parchment.  I imagine you'll want to mask that out.

Good to see you working on this again.

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## jfrazierjr

> This is minor, but I noticed some of the white coloration from the northern mountains discolors the black background behind the parchment.  I imagine you'll want to mask that out.
> 
> Good to see you working on this again.


Thats because I was dumb and saved this as a jpg instead of a png as the original was... will update when I get a chance..

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## jfrazierjr

Another small update.  Added a bit more to the coniferous forest up north (have not finished yet...) and pushed the shading back toward the darker green spectrum...  Need to add the trunks...

Next up is one or two rivers and then working on some of the settlements that most likely no longer exist.

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## Ramah

You sure do like to take your time with a map, don't you?  :Smile: 

Looking really nice though. When do you expect to have it finished?

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## jfrazierjr

> You sure do like to take your time with a map, don't you?


  Yea well... real life sucks some time...lol




> Looking really nice though. When do you expect to have it finished?


  Thanks....

If my life holds true to form... never....lol.   But really, I hope to have this thing done sometime in the next 2 months or so.   Not really a ton left to add to it time wise other than drawing up some city/town/fort icons.  That and doing up a proper compass will be the most time.  Adding the rivers and labels will take little time.   I had thought about doing a small region of swampy land in the southeast, but I just can't think of a way to do it to match this style map, so may just bag it...

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## Karro

> Yea well... real life sucks some time...lol


Doesn't it, though?  I've consigned myself to the reality that I will not be able to finish my map until after Grad School, if then (depends on conditions with the impending bambino).

But this is looking quite fine, here.  I would say the piney forest is looking a little... technicolor, so to speak, compared to the wonderfully earthy colors of the rest of the map.

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## jfrazierjr

Minor update... tweaked the color mix in the brown mountains and adjusted several of the outline opacity.  I also blurred the forests just a bit to tone down the heavily stippled look on the large forest and the heavy color contrast on the conifers forest.

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## jfrazierjr

Ok.. another minor update.  Thanks to Ramah, I used one of his just added wireframe castles for my first town/city icon with some color and shading added.  More to come at some point.

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## Ramah

Heh. That was a quick use.  :Smile: 

Well I quite like it, but I think you've made the cones on the top of the castle towers a little... rainbow. They look a little too bright to me. If you coloured them all the same colour as you've done the smallest cone (the dark one) I think it would look pretty cool. Or at the very least, ditch the yellow.

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## rdanhenry

Maybe the castle owner likes a little color. Personally, I think the blue looks best, so that would be my choice if they were all made the same. All yellow would look a bit too much like candles.

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## jfrazierjr

> Heh. That was a quick use. 
> 
> Well I quite like it, but I think you've made the cones on the top of the castle towers a little... rainbow. They look a little too bright to me. If you coloured them all the same colour as you've done the smallest cone (the dark one) I think it would look pretty cool. Or at the very least, ditch the yellow.


Heh.. yea... I was going to (try) do some by hand, but your wireframe versions were just to useful to pass up.  I just pasted into a new image added shading (dodge/burn) based on my light angle and the color and copy/pasted in.   I could not use the houses as they were way to dark with the shading on this type of map, so will do my own when I get time.  I did play with it a tad more after that upload and ended up adding a blur to the even out the lines and make it a bit more in line with the map itself.

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## Ramah

Yeah, I did the houses in a diferent way by basically distorting and skewing my original house brush to make it a little more iso and then I flipped it and edited it as I made the other ones, so I never really had an outline to work from.
Having said that though, I've taken a few of those house brushes and deleted all the shading to leave very simplified outlines for the purpose of shrinking and flipping as I try and get some decent looking city brushes.
You're welcome to those house outlines if you want them. They're nothing special though.

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## torstan

This is where this went - that's what happens when you change the name of your posts  :Smile: .

I like how this is going. The coniferous forests are lovely and the overall colouration of the map is great.

There are a few things that stand out though. Your compass, tree trunks and castle are perfectly sharp and detailed at the individual pixel level. Everything else on the map is slightly blurred and more watercolour in style. The contrast is striking and makes those features look cut and pasted. A bit of work (duplicate and blur/smudge perhaps, possibly reduce the overall opacity to let the paper texture and colour show through?) will help these to blend into the rest of the map.

What are the future plans for the Garnok region? Just a castle or is there more to come?

I do really like the ice shelf. It works well.

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## jfrazierjr

> This is where this went - that's what happens when you change the name of your posts .
> 
> I like how this is going. The coniferous forests are lovely and the overall colouration of the map is great.
> 
> There are a few things that stand out though. Your compass, tree trunks and castle are perfectly sharp and detailed at the individual pixel level. Everything else on the map is slightly blurred and more watercolour in style. The contrast is striking and makes those features look cut and pasted. A bit of work (duplicate and blur/smudge perhaps, possibly reduce the overall opacity to let the paper texture and colour show through?) will help these to blend into the rest of the map.
> 
> What are the future plans for the Garnok region? Just a castle or is there more to come?
> 
> I do really like the ice shelf. It works well.


Everything you say has already been noted... The existing compass is just a place holder.   I will be doing a shaded Warhammer (with spiky top pointed north) that has a parchment like the existing on when I get on near the end for my final compass... In the local copy, I have already blurred the castle lines also to make it fit in a bit better as well as a tad more blur on the walls of the cliffs.    I am waiting until my other computer comes back so I can get my brush for the trees to re plant under the trees in the NE and then will blur the whole layer a touch.

Yes, there will absolutely be more locations added before I am finished. That kind of carved out area of the mountains right of where the trail ends will get a twin tower type thing as the gates to Garnok.   I will also be placing at least 2-3 other cities as well as 2-3 villages and was thinking of doing up a few huts/yurts for the area between the cliffs and the NE forest to represent barbarian tribes that roam the tundra.   Not sure if/where I can fit it in, but might also be the gates to another Dwarven city in the Northern mountains also.

Finally, I will probably add a bit more distressing to the whole parchment texture at the very end of the process.

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## jfrazierjr

Ok... another minor update...  Added another city.   blurred both.  Blurred the cliffs a bit more.   Blurred the Compass (might end up keeping this one.. not sure..)

I like the way it's coming along now...  A few more settlements, a river or three and this one should be close to done.

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## torstan

Fair enough. You're still going to be detailing this on a smaller scale than before. It might be worth sharpening up the terrain features instead of blurring your new details. A small hard brush and a hard light layer might well do the trick pretty quickly. Then you'll be able to get away with more fine detail in your new features.

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## jfrazierjr

Ok.. another small update.  Redid my tree brush, added back and blurred them.

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## jfrazierjr

Ok.. another small update.  used some of the icons Ramah made as well as some others and added a few more locations, notably the Gates of Garnok, the players initial starting point when they finally get out into the upper world...

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## Ascension

About the only thing that I can see is that the two castles in/near the mountains might be too dark of coloring, make em a lil bit lighter.  Minor, shrug, you know what yer doin.  Nice job.

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## Karro

The updates to the coniferous forest in the northeast make it much better than the previous, IMO.

Looking great!

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## jfrazierjr

Ok.. yet another small update.   

Added some rivers and redid the water outline to account for the rivers.Added a swamp(not sure I like it.. made a brush, but I think it rather sucks....)Added a bit more noise to the existing buildings to give a hint of being built from quarried rocks.

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## Steel General

I don't think the swamp looks bad, but to me it looks more like trees.

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## jfrazierjr

> I don't think the swamp looks bad, but to me it looks more like trees.


Yea.. I may redo it when I get home... at work and used a mouse to create the brush (just in memory, did not save) and might get better results at home with my tablet....

The more I look at it... the more I quite dig how some of the rivers follow the hill terrain, especially the lower one right outside of the dark grey city....

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## Karro

The swamp does indeed look like a a grouping of skeletal trees on a gray, watery field.

Depending on the kind of swamp you want, I would think you might want to introduce more of a washed out green-gray color into the swamp texture.

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## jfrazierjr

Ok.. thanks to Starraven and Karro, new swamp...

Removed the portion of the mask that was showing the default water through into the swamp.Added new swamp symbols thanks to Starraven(published icon set)Added mix of 3 greens to a layer and masked them off to the sample section.

I really like the way that this looks now..  Just a few more cities and perhaps ruins to add (waiting on Ramah, thanks for the GREAT ISO settlement icons!), labelling and this one is done... Only a year + after I started a little lunch time experiment....heh

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## Karro

Swamp looks great, now!

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## Steel General

That swamp looks great...

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## jfrazierjr

Ok... another update.   I added a new city using 4 or 5(can't remember) of Ramah's excellent building brushes(I used the shaded versions this time).   I created a new image at 900x900 300 ppi and used layer masks to shuffle the order of the images so that none of the other line work would show through those on top.   Then I dropped a new layer with some colors under all the line work and went wilde with colors.   


Anyway.... I put this onto my map and think this looks rather good overall....

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## Ascension

That's some nifty work.  Slow n steady wins the race, eh?  I wasn't all that impressed early on but now it's really coming to life and I think you're doing a great job so keep on keepin on, bro.

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## Ramah

I like that you've combined brushes to make bigger brushes. I hoped that would happen (that's all I've done to make the city icons that I've done so far so there's nothing to stop other doing the same if they require cities.)
I'm not wildly in love with your colouring on that city though, just a few bright colours that stand out too much. But then I didn't like the yellow conical roof on the castle you put in but I guess that is growing on me now. Hehe.

My favourite part of your map so far though? Your swamp. I think that looks amazing.  :Smile:

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## jfrazierjr

Another update.   I added a lake beside the large town, so I had to redo the water stroke.  I also removed the thin outline around the swamp... and like it much better now....

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## jfrazierjr

> I like that you've combined brushes to make bigger brushes. I hoped that would happen (that's all I've done to make the city icons that I've done so far so there's nothing to stop other doing the same if they require cities.)
> I'm not wildly in love with your colouring on that city though, just a few bright colours that stand out too much. But then I didn't like the yellow conical roof on the castle you put in but I guess that is growing on me now. Hehe.
> 
> My favourite part of your map so far though? Your swamp. I think that looks amazing.


Thanks... I got the swamp brushes from Starraven (I think thats the name) who uploaded a nice big group of PS brushes a few months ago.   

Just keep checking it out... the colors will grow on ya....

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## jfrazierjr

OK... another update... I redid the forest strokes to make them consistent in width as well as added a few additional wooded sections.  I plan to redo the forest shadows also.   With that, a few additional town icons, and some labeling, the end is finally in sight.... Perhaps within the week, if not, I am off after Christmas, so it's almost sure to be done before the year ends...yeah!

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## Karro

Looking fabulous.  Can't wait until the end!

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## jfrazierjr

Ok... Very minor update... 

I created a tile for fields and rotated from a crosshatch pattern someone did here somewhere.  It is not perfectly seamless, but on this image, it's not that big a deal.   Note really sure if it matches this map or not, but figured I would give it a try and see what others think.

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## Ascension

I couldn't find it at first then was like "duh".  The color might need to be yellow or orange or something, maybe darker, but style-wise I think it fits just fine.

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## Ramah

I think it might look a little better if it was rotated round so that it was more in line with with the iso lines of the city. Like, 10-15 degrees clockwise or something.

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## jfrazierjr

Ok.. Thanks to Ramah for pointing it out, and a HUGE thanks to Torstan with helping get the pattern right and tillable.

In this revision, I cleaned up a few issues with parts of the map being to dark where I needed it to be lighter.  

I also added more fields using the new pattern image Torstan helped me with.   Still a bit more to do with another few towns/cities(2-4 or so) and then labels.  Was thinking of actually labeling this with Runes instead of human type fonts, but may use the Thor(?) font instead... just not sure as of yet.

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## torstan

I think that pattern's a bit too subtle for me at that scale. I think you might want to bump up the scale a little or reduce the paper texture a little. I'd say it's pretty hard to get details in a map that are of a smaller scale than the paper texture.

Looking good though. I like all the location icons - they blend into the map really well.

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## jfrazierjr

> I think that pattern's a bit too subtle for me at that scale. I think you might want to bump up the scale a little or reduce the paper texture a little. I'd say it's pretty hard to get details in a map that are of a smaller scale than the paper texture.
> 
> Looking good though. I like all the location icons - they blend into the map really well.


Your absolutely right.  I redid my texture bump map layer since I accidentally blurred out seconds of the texture (the paper texture).  When I did that, I forgot to reduce the opacity of it as well as I jacked up the opacity on the cloth weave texture at the same time by accident.  I noticed this right after I posted it, but did not have time to fix and repost, so here is the update now.

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## jfrazierjr

Only two years later, finally an update to my campaign map... added one city, nothing else.. at this point, just adding cities, labeling and perhaps a different compass are all that remain... perhaps before the end of the year...

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## jfrazierjr

Funny how to start thinking and playing with how to do something and right afterward someone comes along and shows everyone.   I call this the grasslands update.   Just a few days ago, I started playing around with drawing grass... then Jonathan Roberts(Torstan) posts his mini tutorial... so.. here is the results.  Very timely and helped a lot....

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## torstan

Looks good! I'd knock the saturation down in the grass a little, but otherwise it looks good to go.

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## jfrazierjr

> Looks good! I'd knock the saturation down in the grass a little, but otherwise it looks good to go.


The sprigs or the background color?  The sprigs are already down to about 60% layer opacity.

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## jfrazierjr

I always have trouble finding "grass" colors in the right range.  Most of the time, I end up going way to light and looking rather neon...

Hopefully, this is better.

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## torstan

Yep, that looks good.

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