Greetings from Germany

[Sophia DeLuna]

Hi everyone!
I found this forum via ascension's "atlas tutorial".

I love maps and I've been trying to make a world map for a novel of mine. Unfortunately I can't manage to work with this (and most other) tutorial because I only have Micrografx Picture Publisher and thus a lot of the things don't work (or at least I don't know how, as my program is in German). Nonetheless, I did gather a few very helpful tips!

I don't like GIMP, and I could never get the hang of Inkscape, so I have to make do with PP until I can afford Corel Painter and/or Photoshop.

Although I am doing fairly well with digital paintings *, my attempts of mapmaking are pretty poor to say the least. Perhaps I'll make a request in the request thread later, to see if someone might be willing to do a simple map for me ... one that would work with an ebook reader. A prettier map can wait until either I have the skill to do it or until I have the money to pay for it

Now, what else should I write here? I suck at introductions

I live in Nuremberg/Germany; I love writing (in English), painting and photography among other things.

Cheers everyone!

Sophia


*Some of my digital paintings ... all done with mouse and Micrografx Picture Publisher: http://www.redbubble.com/people/soph...ital-paintings

[Gidde]

Welcome to the Guild!

[Sophia DeLuna]

Gosh, that was quick! Thank you!

[Sophia DeLuna]

Would anyone be so kind and give me some advise, please?
I made another attempt at a simple map. I'm not totally happy. I guess I used too many trees.
Any other suggestions as to what I could change to make it look better (and to enhance the readability for ereaders)?
Shakaran Map.jpg

[Katto]

Hallo Sophia,

start a new thread in the WIP(work in progress) section to get some critique. It is easier to find there.
IMO the scale of the trees doesn't fit to the mountains and the black colour outweighs. Also give your islands/continents a bit more space.

Oh, I forgot: Welcome to the Guild

[Sophia DeLuna]

Hi Katto,
Thank you for the welcome and for your advise!
I'll start a new thread then.

[arsheesh]

Greetings Sophia, and welcome to the guild. I agree with Katto's remarks, and would also recommend adding a bit more detail to the mountain ranges.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Korash]

Well Sophia, I have had a look at your other work and from what i see there, I think you have a good working knowledge of the prog that you use, so I would continue working in that. While other programs might be able to do some things better, or at least differently than yours, it doesn't mean that you can't do mapping using what you have at hand. I see that you have some artistic talent, so getting better at mapping would IMHO be a matter of learning how to use your program better in a mapping sense. I would suggest looking through some tutorials and see if there are techniques that you can use with your prog. You might have to try and figure out what the corresponding commands are to get similar results, but as long as you are using a similar TYPE of program, it should not be too difficult.

And Welcome to the Guild, The Mappiest Place on the Web

[Mark Oliva]

Gruaß Di' Gott aus'm Staagerwald nach Nermberch.

It's good to have another Middle Franconian on board.

[Sophia DeLuna]

Arsheesh: Thank you for the welcome! I opted for less detailed trees instead. I think it looks a bit better. See in my WIP thread. (Will post the new map as soon as I'm finished answering here.)

Korash:Thank you for the welcome, and for looking at my work! What you say is very encouraging! Not being blessed with lots of money, I always used to make do with what I could afford. And I really love Micrografx PP. However, the better I get, and the more advanced stuff I try to do, the more I have to fight with the limitations of PP. For instance, for the improvement of the map today I had to do a lot of tedious work to get the trees into the picture as PP doesn't have transparent layers (I can get around that in many cases but not in this one), and thus it was a pain in the rear end to make masks of each type of tree I painted - transfer into objects - and then do hundreds of copy-pasting.
I would probably opt for Corel if I can ever afford it, because Corel bought Micrografx and thus I suppose it is at least somewhat familiar. And also I am mainly doing paintings, and Corel seems to be perfect for that.
However, there are still a lot of functions in PP that I don't know how to use, yet. So yes, there's still room for improvement, even with PP.

Mark: LOL Many thanks!
I'm not a Franconian, though. Just living here now. Was born near Stuttgart, grew up in Berlin, and have lived in many different places in Germany and Italy.