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The Cartographers’ Guild is a forum created by and for map makers and aficionados, a place where every aspect of cartography can be admired, examined, learned, and discussed. Our membership consists of professional designers and artists, hobbyists, and amateurs—all are welcome to join and participate in the quest for cartographic skill and knowledge.
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In keeping with the whole contribution thing I decided I wanted to convert Ramah's mountain brushes into GIMP brush pipes ala Gidde's from her hand drawn map tutorial. So I am following her convention of mountains as 100 x 100 and hills as 100 x 50. I scale the brush to fit that space, center it up and then color in white behind it to get rid of the transparent parts. Then merge. It's not hard, just tedious. I'm only on #14 out 63 from the mountains left set.
I've been on a mission of sorts to make some kind of meaningful contribution to the guild. In trying to make some heraldry for the Linlandia map I came across juggernaut's Heraldry and figured that I would continue where someone else left off, converting the gif files into png vectors. So far I am up to Ba, which is about 121 files. The total is 810, although there are quit a few duplicates, so I still have a ways to go.
I've made a few modifications to the town and fortification icons, and added roads. Not entirely happy with the roads; may try a different method or just change them up a bit later on. Probably I'll be using different types of lines for different types of roads, but for now I'm keeping it simple just to get this done.
I am surprised how much functionality is in the software thet Cartographer's Guild uses. And since I do use this site a lot - if with big breaks - I decided to make good use of that functionality. I've created some albums and put some of my maps in them. :p
I wasn't quite satisfied with the mountains on the last pass--the tops were too flat and I couldn't figure out how to fix the wierd ridge around the mountains. So I started over. I like the final result: The next part of RobA's tutorial is putting towns and roads on the map. Here is what I have so far: More updates as I continue working on this.
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