I decided to try futzing around today with a really basic landscapey thing. I've learned that I can't into combining textures and perspective, but oh well. At that point I probably would want to look into legitimate 3D rendering programs instead of stubbornly trying to do everything in GIMP. I like the clouds, at least.
There's a pretty decent terrain generator I used to run every once in awhile called Terragen. It's pretty decent with how it works, and it allows for plugins to be used while at it. With enough time and processing power, I've made a few interesting scenes, and even rendered some DF terrain maps into the system, and got a better visual idea of the land.
Here's an example:
There are other angles I could approach it, but I was rendering the map top-down like in DF. Not taking pictures from different places in it.
EDIT:
I don't recall if I posted on here (this thread, specifically) with it or not, but I did this about a month ago, and I still think it's pretty neat. What happens when you combine the Electric Sheep screensaver with the Rainmeter desktop interface?
Pardon some notes, Lent began at the time (ends next week with Easter).
And yes, the background animates the entire time. How I got it to work is actually quite simple. Download Electric Sheep, and make a BAT file like this
@echo off
start es.scr /p65552
exit
Execute it, and then presto! You have an animating desktop. Toss in Rainmeter for an interface to go on top of it, and you have what I made. Life Imitates Art; you now have a Hollywood-esque "hacker" desktop.
PRO-TIP:
You can always ALT-F4 out of the Electric Sheep screensaver background. The Windows-Key also works if you need the toolbar (seeing as Electric Sheep even goes over it when it's in front; but if other programs or windows are in use, the toolbar will stick around otherwise; until Electric Sheep is selected again as the primary window (in front)), or want to open a program, or highlight Electric Sheep to close it (right-clicking to close it doesn't work, but you can still ALT-F4 out of it by clicking on it, and hitting that).