Hello!

My name is Thorfinn. I'm originally from Orkney in the north of Scotland, but I've been living in Akita, Japan for the past 8 years. My wife is a local Akitan. She's a dance teacher. I work as an English teacher at a private high school, which unfortunately takes up a lot of my time these days. Cartography is one of the many things I try to find time for.

On the Internet I generally go by my nickname, Thorf. I'm involved in quite a few communities, but the one most relevant to my mapping predilection is Mystara, which is one of the original Dungeons & Dragons worlds. Most of my mapping efforts to date have been recreating the old maps from this setting, in the form of exact replicas as well as updated (corrected, expanded) versions. I did most of these maps between 2004 and 2006.

I'm also a great admirer of Tolkien - books primarily, but I also loved the films. I have yet to put my hand to remaking a Middle-earth map, though. One of my favourite cartographers is Daniel Reeve, who did a lot of maps for Peter Jackson's movies. I'd love to be able to do something as professional as Daniel did, but unfortunately I'm really not much of an artist.

Most of my mapping so far has been in Adobe Illustrator. I'm a big fan of vectors, and I love being able to have complete control of the scale without losing detail. I also use Photoshop, and I'd like to put a bit more texture into my maps in the future, and reduce the crisp, digital look a bit.

In the future I hope to be able to get back to my Mystara maps, expand into renditions of Tolkien's worlds, and also work on my own original setting, which has been ongoing since 2006 (although still under wraps).

It's a pleasure to find a community of fellow cartographers to share tips and tricks with. I hope I can learn a great deal here, and I'm honoured to make your acquaintance.

どうぞよろしくお願いします。