July 2017 Challenge: Thunder Falls

[Mouse]

Thank you, Endi

[Wired]

Wow, those waterfalls are a thing of beauty!

[XCali]

Well done, Sue! Great work with a beautiful map.

[Mouse]

Thank you, Wired and XCali

The waterfall came out differently to the way I wanted it to look, but that happens all the time with the stuff I draw

I know its not actually correct with the white water beginning before the fall like that, and that I might have gotten things a bit out of scale (the whole map is only 22,500 square foot in area - 150 x 150), but I make my excuses by saying its more of a symbol of a waterfall than a realistic impression

I might try another river map some time, but take more time and get the water looking a bit more realistic.

[Mouse]

Credits:

Stone/boulder/gravel textures: textures.com
Bridge & modified fountain (the pit surrounds): Bogies Mapping Objects
Brushes used for waterfall: Assorted sponge and ring brushes from texturemate.com

Waterfall methods:

The sponge brushes were used to erase progressively lighter areas up the front of the waterfall in a series of shade layers (black painted onto 3 identical multiply layers as a block covering the front face of the fall, and erased to reveal the underlying white base - more erasing at the top of the fall than the bottom)

The texturemate ring brushes were used as a base to create new distorted ring brushes using a GIMP G'MIC filter (Filter/G'MIC/deformations/water) to ripple them irregular. The modified brushes were then used to dab the splash rings at the bottom of the waterfall. I then changed the layer mode on this layer to 'dissolve' which creates a scattered field of solid white flecks.

The smeared flow lines on the river were painted in white on an ordinary layer and smeared into the correct transparency and shape using the smear tool. (This was the trickiest part, and the one that I would redo if I had another week to get it right)

The sparkle was created by copying the smeared flow lines layer from above, and setting the blend mode to 'dissolve', then making a new layer from visible of the dissolved layer (which fixes the dissolve as an ordinary bitmap image on a new layer) This was then further sparkled by using GIMPs built in sparkle filter (Filters/Light and shadow/sparkle - more often used to create star fields). A glow around the basic sparkle layer was created by duplicating it, and blurring it slightly, so that each of the sparkles had a tiny halo, like tiny bits of dust and insects caught on the surface of the river and glinting in the sun (well.... that was the intention anyway )

[Weery]

It looks great. Amazing difference from first couple of WIPs to how it turned out! . Well done Mouse and super quick, too

[Mouse]

Thank you, Weery

It was actually quite a bit of fun, even though I was doing it to try and take my mind of how yukky I feel (which is probably why it all happened so fast - the number of hours invovled)

[Diamond]

Yes, the sphere looks much more spherey now.

[Mouse]

Thanks for picking it out for me, D

I thought it was just me seeing it funny until you asked the question