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Thread: Greetings from a fellow map lover

  1. #1
    Guild Member Iapetus's Avatar
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    Post Greetings from a fellow map lover

    Hello everyone! Recently when I did a search for map tutorials, a series of links lead me here. I was so happy when I found this site, because it is pretty much everything I was looking for in one spot. But on to my introduction.

    First off, my name is Iapetus with an uppercase "i," not a lowercase "L." Perhaps it was a bad choice of a handle way back 10 years ago, especially when fonts can make it look otherwise, but I've grown attached to it and use it whenever it's available. I also can't shake the feeling that if I used a lowercase "i," I would have an image in my mind of my mother giving me a Look and saying that I know that proper nouns get capitalized and I should know better.

    My love of maps started when I was very young. I would take the globe my parents had and find where places were, and I also enjoyed the time-honored tradition of spinning the globe and placing my finger on it and seeing where it ended up. I've always been good in geography, and was my class representative twice in the Geography Bees in my Elementary school.

    They always did the classroom Geography Bees before Christmas break, so we had a chance to study some of the questions while we were gone on break. The first time I got in, my Dad went out and bought a large laminated Mercator world map that I could easily set out on the floor. He helped me study for the Bee, and not only did he make sure I knew the right answers, but I had to tell him why the other answers were wrong. He also used the map to help explain many of the questions. Two years later, he also bought me beautiful small wooden box with this map on the lid, and if I wasn't enchanted before then I was from then on.

    I have a bit of experience with imaging programs. I took a class for it in high school and college. My main program of choice is Paint Shop Pro, because it is the one where I originally started on. I also used to design anime wallpapers and submitted a few to AnimeWallpapers.com years ago. (I also really enjoyed that community forum, because like here there were tutorials and areas where you could get critique. It was invaluable to me.)

    I am a writer, and have been for years. I've had a few pieces of poetry published in my college's literary journal, but besides that they're all WIPs. I tend to focus on Fantasy or Science Fantasy as my genres. I've been a casual video gamer for years, mostly doing RPGs. Within the past two years I've also started playing D&D, and right now I'm interested in starting my own campaign.

    I tend to ramble, as you may have noticed.

    I'm looking forward to seeing all of your maps, and learning how to do my own along the way!

  2. #2
    Community Leader Facebook Connected Steel General's Avatar
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    Welcome Aboard!
    My Finished Maps | My Challenge Maps | Still poking around occasionally...

    Unless otherwise stated by me in the post, all work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.



  3. #3
    Community Leader Facebook Connected tilt's Avatar
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    welcome to the guild - looking forward to seing you maps in the WIP forum
    regs tilt
    :: My DnD page Encounter Depot free stuff for your game :: My work page Catapult ::
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    Works under CC licence unless mentioned otherwise

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    Administrator Redrobes's Avatar
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    Welcome. I am a fellow PSP user too tho I don't go for the very latest stuff on it and I am a few versions behind the latest now. Many people use Gimp and PhotoShop but I don't feel as though I am missing anything critical with PSP.

  5. #5
    Guild Member Iapetus's Avatar
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    @ Everyone: thanks for the greeting!

    @ Redrobes: When I first started graphic design in high school, we were using PSP6. I remember being ridiculously excited that Christmas when I was able to get a copy of PSP7 for $20. (Originally $100... thank you, Black Friday.) Then I started to look for tutorials online, and I was sad at how few there were for PSP. I learned how to adapt a bit from the photoshop ones, but it took some experimenting.

    I also downloaded GIMP, because I still haven't found a good PSP equivalent of rendering clouds. This has always bothered me. However, I still prefer PSP because it is the program I am most familiar with, and whenever I need to make a graphic fast I always return there.

    It's good to see I'm not the only PSP user here!

  6. #6
    Administrator Redrobes's Avatar
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    I think its more important to understand the principles behind the effects that people are getting rather than to know the button by button & setting sequence to generate a specific one off effect. I can usually translate whats going on in any of the tutorials to a PSP equivalent.

    I don't know how you do clouds but I am a few versions back and don't have a clouds filter. I generate a large image of greyscale noise and clip bits out of it and resample them up in turn adding in more and more finer noise until I get the clouds effect I want. That also has the advantage that I can paint with a lighten / darken tool in the early stages and get the cloud shape I want. Longer winded for sure but its not that big a deal to do it.

    Here is my PSP tut which has a bit on clouds:
    http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...Paint-Shop-Pro

  7. #7
    Guild Member Iapetus's Avatar
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    Thanks for the link, I will definitely check it out! I'd love to go back to using PSP all the time, for sure.

  8. #8
    Community Leader NeonKnight's Avatar
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    Welcome to the Guild!
    Daniel the Neon Knight: Campaign Cartographer User

    Never use a big word when a diminutive one will suffice!

    Any questions on CC3? Post them with CC3 in the Subject Line!
    MY 'FAMOUS' CC3 MAPS: Thunderspire; Pyramid of Shadows; King of the Trollhaunt Warrens; Demon Queen's Enclave

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