Hello, Everyone! :)

[jbgibson]

Welcome to the Guild, Jalyha. Given your goal of mapping one or more of your worlds, a starting place might be to pick a tool ( software you like or have or can afford, which can produce the kinds of maps you prefer). Then pick a tutorial that will build some skills - not necessarily even a style you want, since any exercise with your toolset will improve its general usefulness. And you'll get the most mileage out of the tutorials if you tackle them in Work-in-progress threads- interactive development will answer questions and give new ideas -- and we're a pretty gently helpful bunch.

Digital tools aren't your only choice by the way - plenty of us prefer physical drawing / painting.

You have a huge advantage in that you've already richly imagined your worlds. That does leave challenges , since total random terrain generation isn't a full option, but random*ness* still can do a lot of the work - you don't have to design every river bend and ridge line.

[Jalyha]

Thanks.

I read through a lot of the tutorials, which gave me the chance to start a WIP thread with a basic map of Naos... though I did get distracted by other things on the site, so there hasn't been much progress on my WIP

I prefer hand-drawing/painting as well, but I ... well I don't have much in the way of gadgetry. I have a 7 year old laptop and a mouse, and that's it... so I can only get my pics up on the computer by snapping a photo of them with a webcam, and those turn out AWFUL. I also have joint issues, which make it easier to do things digitally, but the mouse makes it a pain, so ... idk.

I will probably do as much of the world as I can, and then, if I need more (or actually ever finish a manuscript) I will beg someone here to fix it - even if it costs my rent money, lol

Anyway, thanks for the welcome!


Edit: Thought I might show what a hand sketched map looks like (it's a five minute sketch, but I mean the camera quality )