Hello from Milwaukee!

[OverdrivePrime]

Hi everyone,
After lurking in and out for many months, the time has come to take the plunge!

I'm finally launching into my fairly ambitious (for me - simplistic compared to scope of some of the projects I've seen here) planet mapping project. I use an ancient Mac G5 and Adobe CS2 (looking forward to upgrading when I push enough pennies together), along with absurd abuse of MS Excel and Word.

My goal is a world with a very high level of verisimilitude, and I'm putting a lot of effort into figuring out the plate tectonics, atmospherics, resource distribution, rate of cultural evolution on different contents, etc. The project is the foundation for a writing project and a homebrew roleplaying game that I've been running for some good friends. So far I've been getting by on sketches and fairly low grade maps that I've lashed together from fallen vectors and sprites.

I've seen some absolutely brain-numbing works of beauty created here, and I probably have neither the time nor patience to hone my Photoshop ability to that level. I'm of intermediate Photoshop and Illustrator skill and will likely remain in that camp unless my job takes a drastically different turn.

There are stacks of excellent tutorials here - are there any that the community would recommend as a smart place to get started for a planetary cartography project?

Thanks so much!
-ODP

[OverdrivePrime]

Oh look. A Quickstart Guide in the stickies. Duh.

Hope you don't mind the stench of newb... >___>

[Steel General]

Welcome Aboard!

[NeonKnight]

Welcome to the Guild!

[tilt]

welcome ... sounds like you've allready have your work cut out for you - ambitous project ... myself I shoot from the hip concerning tectonics and stuff ... make a WIP thread when you begin so we can help you as you go along

[OverdrivePrime]

Thanks guys! Hmm... a WIP thread? Sounds like a plan. I'll give it a go right after Thanksgiving after I've bludered through a few more tutorials.