Greetings Everyone, New member

[Ravenbow]

I wanted to toss out a greetings and hello to everyone on this amazing forum. I discovered the site a few weeks ago and have been in awe of the works I am finding here.

Back in the late 80's I started in on my home brew and it has grown in my mind since. In the mid to late 90s I started playing with I 'think" it was Paint Shop Pro 3. These were some very early attempts at making a campaign map. The project has been casually revisited over the years, but I have recently been re-inspired to finish it.

I started with a pencil sketch on old college vellum
Then I would grab a section and work on it. I did not know the program at all. I would draw large area some color like red or green, then flood fill a pattern then repeat etc.

I have included some of the sample areas and finally I am linking what I was able to finish by copy pasting over and over until I got the final.

Now years later I understand layers, and transparency etc I cannot wait to resume my map making dream.

Feed back is welcome and I can't wait to try some tutorials I have seen on the site.

I couldn't figure out how to post the pics into the post so I had to resort to attachments.

[jbgibson]

Welcome, ravenbow. Maps in the introductory post - way to go. That's worthy of reputation.

You do decent work already - can't wait to see you develop better chops, with good tools in hand. Do you already have some of the more capable graphics packages in hand? You don't even have to spend money - the Gimp and Inkscape will do much of what PhotoShop does. and there's tutorials here that'll accelerate your progress. Or if you have access to them, there's scads of commercial apps that get marvelous results, for differing effort and cash outlays.

If you've been thinking about this over twenty years, I assume you've got ideas galore, lacking only a way to put them down on paper (screen) ? That's really the hardest work, the worldbuilding behind the map. Look up some of the WIP threads where cartographers have explained their thinking as they went - search for "Ysi Earth II", for one. Once your ideas have gelled, a diligent application of experimentation and tutorials will get you something between "perfectly servicable" and "awesome art".

Again - welcome!

[Ravenbow]

Welcome, ravenbow. Maps in the introductory post - way to go. That's worthy of reputation.

You do decent work already - can't wait to see you develop better chops, with good tools in hand. Do you already have some of the more capable graphics packages in hand? You don't even have to spend money - the Gimp and Inkscape will do much of what PhotoShop does. and there's tutorials here that'll accelerate your progress. Or if you have access to them, there's scads of commercial apps that get marvelous results, for differing effort and cash outlays.

If you've been thinking about this over twenty years, I assume you've got ideas galore, lacking only a way to put them down on paper (screen) ? That's really the hardest work, the worldbuilding behind the map. Look up some of the WIP threads where cartographers have explained their thinking as they went - search for "Ysi Earth II", for one. Once your ideas have gelled, a diligent application of experimentation and tutorials will get you something between "perfectly servicable" and "awesome art".

Again - welcome!

Thank you for the warm welcome. I have Gimp, PS CS3, and PaintShop Pro. I have not had time recently to work on any of them as my daughter is visiting for the summer and I just do not get PC/Mac time; but as summer turns into autumn here in Minnesota I hope to do some map work for my current (new) campaign.

I am anxiously looking forward to the tutorials. The few I have read through look amazing.

What a great community. I hope to add to it.

[Steel General]

Welcome Aboard!

[NeonKnight]

Welcome to the Guild!