[Award Winner] Hand-Drawn Mapping (for the Artistically Challenged)

[Tuleran]

Thank you so much for this Tutorial Gidde! This is my favorite style of map, and I just finished my very first map, for my new d&d campaign. I couldn't have done it without your tutorial!

First Map: The Kingdom of Eleseen!

[Kieserson]

This is just awesome! Thanks for popping my eyes open. This is how I will be making my maps henceforth.

[Freodin]

With every new map that gets made with this tutorial it becomes more obvious: this is simply one of the best map tuts ever made!

[Yusaku Asano]

Gidde with your tutorial someone can make incredible maps! However since i don't use gimp is possible you or anyone else to make a photoshop version of this tutorial?

Anyway, the maps here are really awesome

[Shagun]

Hey there! I really loved your tutorial "Hand Drawn Map Tutorial (for the artistically challenged)". It really made GIMP easy for me. I downloaded the program for the purpose of map making but it was so damn complicated and none of the tutorials online hit home until I saw yours. It was really easy making maps your way.
I e-mailed to bother you of a problem I seem to face. At the point when we are merging all the visible layers keeping 'river', 'coastline' and 'background' invisible, my map isn't turning out as planned. On merging the layers the image becomes grey with only rivers and coastline visible. All the mountains,hills and forests just vanish. I don't know what to do since I'm new to the program. I was hoping you could help and guide me around this problem, if it isn't too much trouble.


Thanks a bunch!
Hope to hear from you soon!

-Shagun

[JefBT]

Thank you for this amazing tutorial, it helped me a lot.

I'll try to make some brushes too, very fun to play with them.

Here's the result:

[DreamQuestin]

*SQUEE* Thank you, thank you, thank you! This is EXACTLY the style of map I want to create for one of my campaigns! You just absolutely made my day! Great tutorial!

You are my hero

[JMcKid]

Here is my first effort with this tutorial :-)

Thanks so much for sharing this for us all to benefit from - I never thought I would be capable of something like this - and without you taking the effort to document the process I would not be!

[JMcKid]

The only part of this excellent tutorial that confused me was where Gidde changed an earlier step to set a layer mode to multiply, which caused the steps on page 23 to not function correctly. Gidde corrected this step in the thread above - I have included this in the attached PDF using Gidde's instructions in the thread so that a complete PDF is available if anyone would like it.

Basically the only change is to keep the background layer visible at this point in the tutorial and convert all white to transparency after the merge.

Gidde I hope you dont mind me modifying your PDF for this step?

[Deadshade]

Great tutorial. I just tried it mostly in order to improve my GIMP knowledge.
It went rather well (I didn't understand why at some point the layers mode had to be set to multiply but I did it anyway).

But I got utterly lost in the Border section.
What is the purpose ? Just to draw a black rectangle around the image ? If so why not simply draw a black rectangle ?
Anyway I followed blindly up to page 25 without really seeing what was happening because the black and yellow image outline is hiding whatever happens on the edge.

Then I had to stop at "Make horizontal and vertical guides that line up with the border by clicking and dragging ... "
What border ? The black and yellow outline ? What should I drag from where ? What is the purpose ?

I know that this is due to the fact that I have never used the GIMP guides yet but could somebody better versed with GIMP than me explain in a simple manner what I am supposed to do and why ?