Hello from me!

[SuspiciousCookie]

Let me welcome you, seeing as this forum is not exactly highly populated (what a weird thing to say).

Interesting that you would start with mapping villages. I always map out the continents first, and pretty much never map out a village or a city. After all, I don't plan on giving pinpoint accurate descriptions about the streets and the position of the houses and so on when writing my own novel. Anyway, good luck!

I use Adobe Photoshop CS5 myself, but like I said, I usually only map continents. I heard of some good city mapping software though, Google would surely be more than willing to help, too.

I really like the maps you referenced as well. Great detail and design in both of them, even though the second one looks more like a city artwork than an actual map, hehe.

Well, uploading things to the internet certainly doesn't "rob" you of your ownership. You should, however, either add a Copyright mark into your map if you want to upload it, or only upload a smaller, compressed version (this way you always have proof that you are the actual owner). Or, of course, just do both, which is what I do as well.

Cheers,
Cookie

[Sandman01086]

Thank for the speedy reply!

I'm gonna be mapping out the villages, towns etc more as a reference for myself, the novel is going to be pretty descriptive and have a lot of history to it so I don't want to contradict myself whilst writing.

I've had a look at a few on Google, but they often seem complex and not really what I'm looking for (or I'm just impatient and don't learn them properly!)

The first map is pretty much the kind of thing what I'm going for, although Coyotemax is a million miles ahead of me in skill!

I see what you mean regarding ownership, what about reproducing/modifying my work? Do people have rights to do that + how do I specify either way?

Jim