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,
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