The Secrets of Map Making Please

[Diamond]

I draw all my maps with a subtle combination of Diamond, Arsheesh, Bogie, Ravells and Jaxilon's bloods (though I get close to Diamond with a lot of precautions, the damn guy always wants to eat my brain, oh my!). Damn, my mixture stock seems to be low right now. Time to have an emergency CL's meeting pretty soon!

Funny man is funny.

[Korash]

because a base idea like ...
(image)

can end up like ......

(image)

Now THIS requires some sort of tut...

[johnvanvliet]

Now THIS requires some sort of tut...

i can, but there is a bit of a issue for Microsoft users that have never used a terminal .

two of the programs i use do not have prebuilt Microsoft .exe or msi installers

they would need to install MinGW and the gcc compiler and build the software i am using

MinGW is rather easy to install , gcc compiler is easy to use to build the needed source code .The needed list of prerequisites are not TOO huge .


You might be able to use the Microsoft Visual studio you bought for a few hundred if you already have it . However porting code to use VS ... that can be "fun" ( hair pulling out and banging head against the desk type of fun)
( or at least was, i do not own a copy of VS and have not in many years )

there are GUI's to gcc
bloodshed's " DevC++ " -- for MS Windows
and
" Eclipse " can be set to use gcc on Windows

[TK.]

I draw all my maps with a subtle combination of Diamond, Arsheesh, Bogie, Ravells and Jaxilon's bloods (though I get close to Diamond with a lot of precautions, the damn guy always wants to eat my brain, oh my!). Damn, my mixture stock seems to be low right now. Time to have an emergency CL's meeting pretty soon!

Ooooohhhhhh... so THAT'S why!!! I thought all the blood stuff was kinda meh and all, hyped and such and went with sacrifice of muffins and brownies, chocolate chips and all...sometimes even with some icecream! No wonder my maps look like they do >.>


Hey, Diamond and Max, whatcha think coming over my place to...uhmmm...talk...and...have some cookies? Don't mind the mapagram in the center with all the inverted compasses all around, k?!

[Jaxilon]

LOL, funny stuff...and if I'm being honest I feel quite honored to be mentioned above. Thanks, I'll feel good about that for days.

My bit of advice is like everyone has said. You just have to want it enough to keep at it. If you look at the stuff I did when I first started here and was trying to figure out these electronic art tools...well, if I'm honest I think I've really improved by miles and miles. There were lots of times when I was really frustrated. There were lots of tutorials I could never get to work right..most of them actually. There were lots of times I posted stuff and got feedback that helped me to create something much better than what I had. Just be willing to learn and to keep at it and you will get where you want to be. It may not be as fast as you might like, but you will get there.

Because I was working full time and only had my evenings and some weekend hours to do this I would say it probably took me a year to get to the point I wasn't disappointed with what I produced. It took me another year I'd say to get where I felt confident that I could create what I actually envisioned at least as well as I could on traditional materials. I still have plenty of things I start that don't come out right. I feel like those are just experiments and if nothing else I learned another way NOT to do something.

I still think I learned most of my stuff from a few people around here and by just beating on GIMP and Photoshop growling at them for not doing what I wanted and yet sometimes providing me with wonderful surprises. In the end, if you can't do anything anyone else can do, maybe you can do things they can't. There are more than one ways to make a map.

Don't give up and if you find it hard to handle feedback that isn't exactly what you hoped to hear, just learn from it because it will only make you better.

PS. I am witness that on more than on occasion Diamond has mentioned wanting to eat Max's brain.