If you know any college students, you can get the whole Adobe CS suite for only a couple hundred dollars. The down side is that you can't do anything commercial with it.
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If you know any college students, you can get the whole Adobe CS suite for only a couple hundred dollars. The down side is that you can't do anything commercial with it.
Well, I have about a years worth of training in advertising art. They trained us with the Mac version of Illustrator, but adjusting to the PC version shouldn't be too difficult. I know someone who says they have an old copy of the PC version somewhere, but I haven't gotten a clear answer yet as to what they are going to want for it. I have lots of ideas on how to make money off of it once I get my hands on it. One thing I really want to get into is designing CD covers for bands (I'm a HUGE fan of Derek Riggs), but would also enjoy making desktop wallpapers, poster designs, even simple things like custom logos and stuff. I'm a decent artist (never had anyone tell me my stuff sucks anyway :|) and I enjoy it, but all of the stuff I've done has been by hand and mostly just to pass the time. Hmm. I think I'm rambling. I think my point was basically that I would be doing stuff commercially with Illustrator, but I could easily make my own maps with it. Unfortunately, it'll probably be a while before I get my grubby little fingers on it.
Perhaps the thing to do, while you are waiting for your copy of illustrator to show, is to download inkscape (which is free and open source) and use that for making your maps. It may not have all the functionality of illustrator but I reckon it has more than enough to produce excellent looking maps. Sounds to me that you have more than enough artistic talent and drive to have a go at the map yourself!
Ravs
I will certainly take a look at it. Free is one of my favorite words! :D