Intro from Ottawa, Canada

[Jagash]

I shall now officially join the horde of introductions, indistinct from the others. Eventually my posts will make me somewhat more memorable, but alas I am still quite new to the fora.

I have always been a cartographer at heart, from my youth. I went into university for ecology (large scale landscape-centric ecology) and took a number of courses in various forms of cartography. This has worked together with my long history of playing/running RPG's and my limited experience in art to produce the seed of a decent mapper. It also means that I have a decent grasp on what ecosystems would be placed where in terms of geography for that extra sense of realism.

Additionally, I have recently started up my own Indie RPG publishing company called "Genesis of Legend Publishing" over at www.genesisoflegend.com where I will have a very real need for high quality maps.

My tools of the trade are thusfar limited to the open source trilogy of The GIMP, Inkscape and Autorealm.

Feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions, comments or death threats. All are cheerfully accepted. 0

[Steel General]

Welcome Aboard!

You've come to the best place on the internet (as far as I'm concerned) for cartography.

Sit down, kick off your shoes and dive right in - the pool is heated

[Immolate]

Hi Jagash and welcome. Glad to have you in the guild.

[Ascension]

Welcome to the guild. Party at Steel's place

[Gamerprinter]

Welcome to the Guild!

I too am a recently made RPG publisher working on my own project - at least I don't need a cartographer!

At least as an ecologist, you shouldn't have any run-ins with the river police. Check out the tutorials section, lots of GIMP tutorials.

Again, welcome!

GP

[Jagash]

Appreciate all of the welcomes and especially those from the RPG publisher in Ottawa. I will certainly check out the tutorial section.

[NeonKnight]

Welcome to the Guild!

[töff]

Welcome to a fellower indie pubber, and best of luck!

[Jagash]

Are there any particular tutorials or information which would be of particular value to someone just starting out? I haven't produced any decent maps yet and even my poor ones were done ages ago. I am uncertain how do dig through the veritable treasure trove of info here.

[Gamerprinter]

For GIMP the best tutorial to start with is this one - its probably our most famous. Now this one is kind of long, but it goes through lots of tools and teaches many techniques. If you have questions post it at the end of the tutorial. Once you have this one down pat, then search out specific tutorials you might want to know about - making mountains, realistic parchment, making a map dirty, on and on.

GP