newbie

[Hotelier]

Hi there,

I've been drawing maps since I was a little kid. It was always just kind of the next step in my thinking, I just drew maps because that's what I wanted to do. That's how I wrote down what was in my head. I love maps, I'm a bit of a geography nerd (I'm sure I'm among friends, ha) and I know all countries, capitals, geographic facts and context of the world, etc. This means I also love history, especially how the two interact between one another.

However, that's irrelevant. How I differ from the majority of you on here is that I'm more of a realistic mapper, I prefer political geography and the kind of maps you find in world atlases, except for fictional countries and worlds. To be honest, I find fantasy maps mostly contrived and boring. Not to say, I don't really appreciate the art, however. The art in most fantasy maps is phenomenal, I just can't get behind the lore and place names that go along with it all.

I'm trying to get into mapping digitally, as up to this point I've been mostly hand drawing maps. Currently I'm working on a map series (political, bioregions, population, etc) for a fictional planet I created that exists in the Halo universe. It's an agricultural outer colony mostly settled by Baltic peoples that emigrated from Earth. It's not really high quality or anything, as it's drawn on just normal paper.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to talking to fellow cartographers and map nerds - I don't know any in real life besides my geography professor!

[Chick]

Hello Hotelier, Welcome to the Guild!

To get you started, there is a great tutorial in the sticky section of Tutorials, called Quickstart Guide to Fantasy Mapping: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=4276

From there, go to Hand Drawn Mapping for the Artistically Challenged: http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=10655

Once you have completed those two tutorials, you'll be well on your way!!