Hello!

[Larb]

Hi everyone, I learned of this community from youtube, where I found a useful tutorial by someone called rpgmapmaker, which I thought was very cool and informative.
I've been making maps for years, mostly for RPG related things, or some other world-building excercise, so I'm always looking to pick up new tips, no matter how simple they are.

I naturally started with pen and paper before branching out to digital media. For a long time, I used Paint Shop Pro (7.04), but after a while, started to feel a bit restricted by some of its limitations. Now I've moved on to Photoshop CS3, but I'm still trying to get to grips with many of the basics of the application, so things like rpgmapmakers tutorial was really handy.

Anyway, it's great to stumble across a community that's as interested in this stuff as I am.

[Gamerprinter]

Welcome, Larb! You've stumbled on the best site dedicated to the creation of RPG game mapping. Post some of your maps - hand-drawn, PSP maps and anything you've begun experimenting in CS3.

You may want to consider GIMP, an open source (free) image editor like PSP and CS3 - we've got lots more tutorials here for GIMP, rather than CS3 - but we got tutorials for Photoshop as well.

Its best to post whatever you got, in whatever status it currently is - then let us offer advice and tips.

GP

[RPMiller]

Welcome to the Guild Larb! As GP said, definitely post whatever you have and the community will do their best to offer suggestions, tips and critiques to really help you improve in ways you never imagined. I've found that most of the GIMP tutorials can work for CS3 and earlier, but you have to know enough about PhotoShop to know how things translate over so they aren't really direct "How Tos", but more like "Methodologies".

[ravells]

Welcome to the Guild!

[Larb]

Here's a few of the things I've done. All my stuff is a bit disorganised so I just uploaded a few different things for now. Also, I don't have my scanner handy, so I'll upload some hand drawn stuff when I've dug that out.

The Shiro Shosan map was for my L5R campaign. Ordoa was for a future survivalist setting I'd considered. I have another version of it, but it just has rough markings for various nuclear blast radius and fallout effects. =P

The Firma 882 map is from my own setting and is a (partial) world map. And the other one was just me trying out how a deckplan would look in that colour scheme.

Those were all done in PSP7.

[Steel General]

Welcome aboard!

I can only echo what the others here have already posted. I like the maps you posted especially the deck plan (the last one), something about that color scheme just appealed to me.

[Midgardsormr]

I like that Shiro Shosan map quite a lot. It has a definite Asian quality to it, and the colors are well chosen.

Take a look at the Zombie Nirvana Photoshop tutorials. Sad to say, I still haven't gotten around to watching them myself, but I've heard nothing but good about them, and I've liked most of the results that have been posted here.

Welcome, and enjoy yourself!

[ravells]

I love the colours of the darker maps. The lighter maps could use some improvement though. I'm not sure why but there's something unrealistic about the first one. The second light map looks incomplete but I like the way it was going. The dark blue /neon blue maps really rock!

[NeonKnight]

Welcome to the Guild!

I like the maps, especially the 'blueprint' feel of the final map.

[Larb]

I've been hitting the photoshop tutorials pretty hard the past few days (including the Zombie Nirvana ones - thanks for that suggestion!) and because I'm actually beginning to master some of the techniques described, I've been feeling really motivated to keep going. It's also great that there are so many helpful tutorials tips on these forums in one place.

So hopefully, I'll be able to upload something of my own that I've finished soon once I feel I've learned enough.
My first plan is to update the first ever city map I did in digital form. It has a poor layout (it's not very realistic at all) but it sorta has a special place in my world.


As for the maps, the Shiro Shosan was me experimenting with a different style, I've only done half a dozen maps that way. I'm not really sure what else to do with it.

The second one is incomplete because I've only actually detailed half the world. I just needed to make the continents bigger for my players so they could see the whole of that region. That one is one I really want to improve on in the future though so any tips to improve it would be most welcomed.

I'm glad people like the deckplan style one, I've not really done much with that style as I'm not sure where to take it. The colour scheme was inspired by a game called Defcon, which uses a gorgeous vector world map. I think it's worth checking out a screenshot of it if you've not seen it as I found it very inspiring.