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.

[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.

[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....

[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.

[Steel General]

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

[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.

[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...

[torstan]

I see that now.

Right, here's a quick edit:
Forest.jpg

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

[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.

[ravells]

I can't say I'm enchanted about the forest but the mountains are beautiful. The forests just look a bit too flat for an iso type map. Putting a crinkly edge on the forest and maybe a clearing or two would really help with the edge definition. Here is a little screegrab of part of Torstan's latest WIP which shows it much better than I can tell it.