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!