And I ended up here. I continue to be amazed at the amount of useful, quality stuff on the web on every conceivable topic. This site certainly qualifies. I am very happy to have found myself here.

I am working towards a PhD in atmospheric science (hence the username), so I am used to working with real-life maps in things like MATLAB and Vis5d. And I have used GIMP for other things. But I never really did any fictional maps. Then one day my kids and I were making up short little fairy-tale adventure stories, and I decided to write a longer one for my kids to read. Naturally, I thought it would be cool to include a really awesome map. So I looked around for tips on how to make one and ended up here.

Right now I am working through some of the tutorials and learning the various tips and techniques for different kinds of maps. Once I get my feet wet, I will post something for comments.