Another novice mapper

[Cepheid]

Hi Everyone,

My name is John and I stumbled across this forum when most of my searches for guides and tutorials seemed to lead back here.

I play D&D 5e and have always been fascinated by real-world maps, so it's natural that I wanted to begin building better maps for the world in which I play.

I have used photoshop a little in the past, and I'm building what I can in Gimp now, learning as I go.

The campaign I'm playing in D&D is set in a classical-era ancient greece/egypt/middle east setting as opposed to the traditional medieval setting, as a result I have been trying to produce maps that look like they would be painted onto a vase like those of the time did.

This is an early stages regional map I am working on:

http://imgur.com/CdZYafW

Here is a two tone map of the world we play in, Orbis:

http://imgur.com/qknyTEc

I'm interested especially in learning how to make terrain features and symbols work, if anyone knows any reliable ways to make good symbols for forests, mountains, cities, bridges etc, I'd appreciate the info.

Thanks
Cepheid

[ladiestorm]

well, if you want to learn, you have certainly come to the right place! I'm a somewhat newbie mapper myself, and I've learned a lot here!

[Tonnichiwa]

Hi Cepheid,

Welcome to the Guild. As Ladiestorm has said, if you want to learn mapping this is a great place to learn. For a start, be sure to check out the tutorial section of this website for instruction on how to make maps in both Gimp and Photoshop. Some of the tutorials are for beginners and some for more advanced users but all of them are useful. If you are looking for brushes for forests and mountains and things of that nature, you can always look in the Mapping Elements thread near the bottom as they may have some brushes available.

I hope you enjoy your time here as we are a friendly group of people that come together at this site for mapping so feel free to poke around and get to know people.

Cheers

Tonnichiwa

[tilt]

Welcome to the guild. When you've checked out the forums tonnichiwa mentioned you can make a WIP thread for help and critique while you work