Best Method/Style for Rapid Map Sketching

[Gamerprinter]

While I agree that GIMP is a very powerful mapping tool, and it's free to download, its not the easiest program to learn and use - and certainly not the fastest mapping application you can have.

I have written an article posted on *G*M*S magazine helping would-be cartographers select the best progam for their needs - HERE.

Now I use Xara Photo & Graphic Designer 9, its not free ($89), and I am pretty much the only guy who uses Xara for my mapping needs. Ask anyone in the know who the fastest mapper is - here or anywhere, and that is me. Partly because I work at rocket speed to do any graphics, but also partly because Xara is such a fast, vector application to create maps with. I can't claim that everyone using Xara will make incredibly fast maps, but I know that the way the program works, it can certainly facilitate doing incredibly fast maps.

GIMP is good, but by no means fast.

You can click on my various badges beneath my avatar to point to some award-winning maps I've done. I am a professional fictional cartographer having done RPG map commissions for Paizo Publishing, for the Jade Regent Adventure Path (City of Kasai and Kasai gazetteer), Rite Publishing (all the maps for the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror), Iron Crown Enterprises, Conflict RPG and many other smaller publishers - I use Xara to create all my maps (illustrations, cover designs and page layout - and web design.)

I have a dozen or so tutorials in this forum in which I create various things all done in Xara, though the techniques can apply to many different graphics applications.