Hello from Missouri!

[Cartography Dragon]

Hi, I'm an amateur cartographer looking to improve his skills and arsenal of tools. I'd been drawing somewhat crude fantasy maps for a few years, then I picked up Jared Blando's book. Obviously it hasn't instantly made me a master, but my mountain ranges are no longer huge masses of upside down V's!

I've only ever used pen or pencil and paper (and only recently gotten a set of artist pencils and some Copic ink pens), and I want to add digital methods to my toolkit. Tips and tricks to help improve my skills and methods would be greatly appreciated, as would software recommendations for world, city, and country maps.

[ChickPea]

Hi CD and welcome to the Guild.

We've got a blog post here that lists a whole bunch of graphics applications, however to simplify things, if you plan to draw your maps yourself, the majority of people are generally using Photoshop (paid) or Gimp (free). There are a ton of tutorials for both applications in the Tutorials/How To area of the forum. If you don't have Photoshop, try downloading Gimp, since it's free, plus a couple of PDF tutorials, and just see how you go. If you've little or no experience with image editing/painting software, you should probably check out a few 'Beginner's Guide' style tutorials on YouTube, just to familiarise yourself with the tools.

If you don't want to design from scratch, there are other packages like Campaign Cartographer, and its various add-ons, which may suit you better. This is paid software, though you may get a trial period? (I'm not sure). ProFantasy's web site will have more info.

Finally, don't be shy about sharing your hand-drawn maps. We love hand-drawn!

If you're stuck with something or need further advice, start a thread and ask your questions.

[Cartography Dragon]

Thanks! I've downloaded GIMP, as I have extremely limited funds. As I get into digital maps, I'm hoping for software that will feel somewhat like drawing a physical map. I plan to invest into a cheap tablet and stylus, so any recommendations on that and/or what software I should use would be most welcome. Personally, I don't have trouble creating a basic land layout, so that's a non-issue.

I've played around with GIMP some, and I can now say that I definitely don't know what I'm doing. Surely there are better brushes, and there are probably lots of helpful tools, but I'm utterly lost. Looks like I need to go find some tutorials