Map making mentor/guru (which is the Malay word for teacher!)

[hlkhong]

Hello,
I have a 14 year old son who is fixated on cartography and map making. He is a very good artist but at the moment he is stuck because he is trying to figure out how to insert street names, pond names, building names, etc. into an imaginary 1840 city map. I sound like a nutcase mother. His map is A17 size paper, with tiny blocks etc and streets. He has seen these gorgeous "realistic" imaginary maps on the internet and he wants to add to his own map without being limited by the scale of the paper. He thinks it is do-able via software of which he knows nothing. This is a boy who is really passionate about map making and spends most of his time thinking about various scenarios for his imaginary city.

If anyone could help out by posting suggestions for a mother driven crazy by her son's creative energy, please help. Is there anyone who is willing to be a mentor for questions on map making, globe making? Thank you.


https://drive.google.com/folderview?...lE&usp=sharing

[- Max -]

Hi there,

Your son is very talented indeed ! May I suggest you to help him opening some Work In Progress thread and upload there his map? He'll be able to receive comments, advices and feedbacks from our friendly and helpful members No doubt that he sure deserves his seat here at the Guild !


By the way I'm moving this thread in a proper section of the forums.

[Chick]

Hello, hlkhong, welcome to the Guild. I think you will find that everyone in this site is happy to help, advise, mentor, and otherwise encourage someone like your son.

To start with, I suggest you download GIMP, a free software that has lots of capabilities for mapmaking, and let your son try it out. If you want to spend a lot of money, you can go for Photoshop instead. Once he becomes adept with the software, he can do whatever he wants on his maps.

Download GIMP here: http://www.gimp.org/

Hope to see some of his work posted here!

[jbgibson]

And for the same price as the GIMP :-) you can download Inkscape. The difference between the two programs is that GIMP (like Photo$hop) works with a fixed set of pixels, whereas Inkscape (like Adobe Illu$trator) thinks in vectors, which can be output at any desired size. Inkscape excels at text on an angle or on a curve. Many folks will draw their map in Photoshop or GIMP, then place labels with Inkscape. He could scan in one of his hand-drawn city maps (which I would love to see!) and use any of thousands of free fonts to label elements. Many are slightly irregular which might best match his hand-drawn linework, but that choice would be totally up to him. Do you have access to a scanner? Photocopy shops and printers here often can scan for a reasonable price.

You're definitely NOT a nutcase mother ! Not only are you trying to get him the tools with which to pursue his passion, in this case you are getting him into saleable skills. Proficiency with graphics software is useable in numerous careers. His work by hand is already very good. I too would encourage him to join the Guild and post maps as he works through them. Even one mentor in a field is good; here he would in effect have dozens.

[SteffenBrand]

Never tried Inkscape but I recently stumbled over Mischief. It also works like a drawing tool but uses vectors so you can scale as you like. It's fairly cheap and seems pretty good (although I never testet it). Also I think you can test this for free with all utilities...

And by the way, I can't possibly say enough how welcome he and you are here. He already got the best basics he can have to just dive in here =)
Cheers, Steffen

[Freodin]

Is there anyone who is willing to be a mentor for questions on map making, globe making?

This is (a huge part of) what this place here is for. We all here do share your son's passion for maps and map making... and there a lots of friendly, helpful, amazing "nutcases" here who love to share their enthusiasm with others.

Send him here. He will fit right it... and from a short look at his maps you shared, I can already tell that he can already teach a lot as well as learn.

[Hai-Etlik]

Map labelling is one of the things that really sets cartography apart from just knowing graphic design and geography. An excellent resource to get started is Positioning Names on Maps by Eduard Imhof.

I'll second jbgibson's recommendation of Inkscape as a tool for doing labelling. I wrote an overview of tools in Inkscape that are useful for fantasy map making here.

If your son wants to get a taste of real world cartography, he might want to take a look at OpenStreetMap (Essentially a map built like Wikipedia) or GIS tools like QuantumGIS. I started writing an intro to QuantumGIS here.