Hello everyone!

[LostCoastlines]

Hello!

I've been heavily into world building for awhile now. However, I've just decided to get into mapping. I am having trouble however, as I have no clue how to create maps at all. I am using GIMP mostly, as well as Wilbur and any other free software. Does anyone have any guides/tutorials on how to create world or region maps? Thank you

[OldRed]

Welcome to the guild! There are lots of tutorials here. Just type tutorial in the search box. One of my favourites is the one prepared by Giddie. It's really simple and easy to do. I think the title is something like "Hand drawn mapping for absolute beginners". The author of the tut makes the brushes (mountains, forests) available in order for you complete the tut.

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[Mouse]

Hi LostCoastlines

That's an absolutely HUGE question, if you don't mind me saying. It leaves me kind of a bit stumped myself as to where to start, but I guess you have to start somewhere, eh?

Well... if I didn't know anything at all except how to use GIMP and Wilbur and I wanted to make a regional map, I'd probably start by having a good old oogle at all the finished maps I had time to look at in the Finished Maps forum. They are created in all different kinds of software, of course, but you will find the vast majority of them are done in Photoshop, GIMP, Krita... or in an equivalent bitmap editor.

What that means is that most of the time you would be able to imitate things that you like about other people's maps by practicing the style - mountains like Mr A, rivers like Mr B, trees like Mr C.... and so on, till you have a style all of your own.

Getting to grips with exactly how to go about re-creating an entire style in one go, however, would probably be better done by using the tutorials we have here on site in the Tutorials/How To forum, or if you can't find anything you particularly like there, its not too hard to convert the Photoshop techniques demonstrated by Jonathan Roberts in his Fantastic Maps videos on YouTube.

Maybe its time for me to stop rabbiting on and let you have some peace to think about what kind of style you really want to go for. Maybe if you find a good map you really admire and want to emulate in your own way, you could give us a link to it and we could provide some advice that is a bit more focussed than my rather vague suggestions above