Scottish gamer calling in
Hello everyone! I'm a pen & paper roleplayer from Edinburgh, Scotland.
I ran a game over summer and created my first region map and dungeon maps. I did this by hand, with coloured pencils, but I'm interested in using tools like Inkscape and GIMP (I'm primarily a Linux user) to make my maps more exciting, and hopefully let me create faster.
Hello spaceLem, 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!!
Hiya SpaceLem, fellow Scot who's also a Linux user here (though not a gamer.)Welcome to the Guild.
If you're very new to Inkscape and Gimp, my personal tip is to watch some Youtube videos to acquire basic skills and techniques, then take it from there. Looking forward to seeing your work. Don't be shy about asking for help.
"We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"
Chick: Thank you! I found this forum while looking at videos on mapping. I wish I'd known about it back in the summer before my first attempts!
Chickpea: Hey there! I'm not totally new to Inkscape or Gimp (I've used Inkscape a fair bit to touch up graphs and data for my work), but I'm still pretty much a novice. It can be a bit frustrating looking at videos and seeing the ease at which some people can get results, while I'm still working on making the coast line look decent, but everyone's got to start somewhere.
I might scan in the maps I've already done and post them (hopefully it will be so I can say "look how far I've come since then"...).
As someone currently learning to use GIMP, I have to advocate making lots of practice maps and tinkering extensively. I'm currently finding Arsheesh's Eriond-style Tutorial extremely useful and easy to use and very, very helpful. But even with that, tinker and tweak extensively. It's the best way to learn a new piece of software and to learn the sorts of things you like.
As for Inkscape, it's not nearly as daunting at a basic level as GIMP (imo), but there seem to be a lot of more advanced things you can do with it that I haven't begun to get into. Definitely check out tutorials and fiddle. It's great software.
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