Mae tollen!

[Mar-Evayave]

Hello there! I'm Mar. *curtsy*

A bit about me, eh? I'm a huge fantasy/sci-fi fan. I've been writing for my own interests for roughly 14 years. I've been using GIMP for the last 8 years. I got into using GIMP as a way to create walling/flooring for Sims 2 (which I then shared on the modthesims website, under my username there of Naeniver), but I've also used it to create a vast assortment of banners, backgrounds, and other pieces of art.

What I'd really love to do, however, is learn to use it for map-building. Until now I've always done it (as well as other sketching) by paper and mechanical pencil, always black and white (well, more like smudged shades of grey, since it IS just a pencil, and I always end up with the side of my hand coated in graphite). I have a deviantart account as well (again, as Naeniver), though I only have a handful of hand-sketched and GIMP-designed pieces there.

But I'm no expert, and I'd really love to be able to reach the level of some of my favorite fantasy maps, like Middle-Earth and Alagaesia.

So, um, yeah! That's me in a nutshell.

Thanks!

[J.Edward]

Hey Mar - welcome to the Guild
That sounds just like how I and others here started.
Each step takes you further on the road to building better maps.
You'll find what you're looking for here.
Cheers,
J

[tilt]

welcome to the guild. We have a lots of good tutorials in here and when you're ready to start mapping make a WIP thread for help and critique while you work

[Mar-Evayave]

Thank you both for welcoming me. I have been looking at the tutorials and trying out the Hand Drawn Mapping by Gidde. I'll have to post later if it turns out well (or get tips if it doesn't xD ).

[arsheesh]

Welcome to the Guild Mar! GIMP is a wonderful tool, one which I've used extensively for creating photo-realistic style maps. There are heaps of tutorials here at the Guild on how to use this software to create maps. That being said, the current version of GIMP has only limited tablet support. Thus, if you are looking to digitally hand draw your maps GIMP may not be the best program for you (at least not till the next version arrives). A very impressive alternative that also happens to be a free open source program is Krita. It is designed specifically for the purposes of illustration, rather than photo-editing, and is quite good at what it does. To my knowledge there aren't yet any tutorials here on the Guild about creating maps with this software. However insofar as the techniques for creating hand-drawn maps are pretty much the same regardless of what software you use, you could just as easily use a Photoshop tutorial to learn the techniques and just apply them to Krita. Anyway, something to think about.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Mar-Evayave]

Thanks, Arsheesh. At the moment I'm "hand drawing" with my mouse. xD I'll keep Krita in mind though. So far the largest challenge with the tutorial I mentioned above is that it is a little outdated and some of the instructions are harder to follow due to GIMP updates. I'm keeping my fingers crossed though.