Hello, there. J Digory' Intro

Hi there, everyone. The name's Digory, and I'm an ok artist with a tablet and some decent experience with it. I prefer to use Painter when using my tablet, but I am VERY comfortable in Fireworks when doing graphics.
I play rpg games of the home-brewed variety, and I love creating the rules and the worlds that my friends and I adventure into, but for all my artistic ability, I really suck at maps. Badly I tried making a map and came up with the first attachment. It sucks. And it took me forever.
Well, I bought some software to help me out, and it didn't get any better. *sad, sad laugh*
The second attachment was my attempt with Fractal Mapper and many hours spent. Anyway, I came here to learn some techniques and to see some great examples of quality maps that don't look like they were handed out with an NES rpg game.

Wecome to the Guild Digory! Great first post with maps and everything. :D

Welcome to the Guild!

Hey! I liked the maps in NES roleplaying games. Sigh. Anyway the second one looks ok to me. Anyhow I am on the wrong side of the learning curve myself, I use a tablet for cleaning up photos, but doing maps and illustrations is new to me as well and this site has been full of great tutorials and help. I hope you find it as useful as I have so far!

I just don't want to MAKE the maps that should have been in NES role-playing games.

Welcome aboard!

Welcome aboard, J Digory.

Ok, here is a sample from the same map idea that I attempted to do in Painter. Some elements of it I am happy with, but it is very much lacking compared to what I would actually like to achieve.

They are both small sections of the map, but it's really the only section I had anything interesting on. hahaha The second one is a closer shot of the same part.

Ah, thanks for the welcome, everyone.

Welcome to the Guild Digory and thanks for the mini bio!

First of all, the difference in quality between the first two maps you posted and that new slice is huge.

Now, if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend you take a look at Sirith's tutorial here: http://www.cartographersguild.com/tutorials-how/1467-award-winner-painting-maps-painter.html

Welcome, and enjoy yourself!