Introduction

[SaxinisKion]

Greetings all. I've decided that I wanted to try and make maps again. I'm terrible drawing by hand and probably worse by computer, but you have to keep trying until you get better. My tools are usually spreadsheets, so moving on to artistic software will present a steep learning curve.

I'm using Gimp 2.8 and have found a bunch of brushes. I haven't figured out how to save color palettes to the right place yet. Any tips or directions to up-to-date tutorials for World/Regional/Kingdom level maps will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Sax

[ChickPea]

Hi Sax, and welcome to the Guild.

If you haven't already looked there, head for the Tutorials area of the forum. There are a whole bunch of tutorials for Gimp there. It's true that some of them may be a little of date now, but the concepts are mostly still the same. If you get stuck with a particular step, start a thread and ask for help. This comment's full of downloadable PDFs that might help get you going. Gidde's tutorial is always popular and might be one try.

Hope you can find what you need, but if you need help, just ask.

[SaxinisKion]

Thank you ChickPea. I'll take a look at your links.

Any thoughts about Campaign Cartographer 3?

[ChickPea]

I have no personal experience with CC3+ but there are a number of people who use it (like Mouse and Tonnichiwa, to name two). If you've got specific questions about CC3, ask them in the Software Discussion folder and I'm sure someone can help you.

[Mouse]

Hi SaxinisKion

Which software you chose depends a lot on what kind of maps you want to draw. I use a range of different software, though I am mainly a CC3 mapper. I use GIMP to make more painterly backgrounds, and I've used a range of other pieces of software, like Inkscape, to do other small jobs which I have then imported as finished symbols(icons) to enrich my CC3 environment.

Do you have fixed in your mind already what kind of maps you want to make? If you link to a couple of examples here at the Guild we can probably supply quite a lot of suggestions and helpful advice, though I agree with ChickPea that you would be better off starting a discussion like that in the Software Discussion folder