Hello folks, new member here!

[Flow]

Hey!

So I am a quite young artist all the way from southern Finland. I am deeply interested in history, especially the period of the Roman Empire and the empires of the Mayas and Aztecs. I found it very interesting following the legions of Rome on the maps of the world and very helpful for picturing, for example, the movement of armies. And since I write a lot, I wanted to illustrate the environment I used by maps. Naturally, I interested of making them, my goal being some day to draw awesome digital maps. I have been working with a fantasy world for a year or so, not only with the mapping but with empires, kingdoms, cultures, religions etc. belonging to it. My point of interest of this moment is Sumujenmeren saaret, the rough translation being "Islands on the Sea of Fogs" or shorted to "Fog Islands". They locate in the vast ocean, a long distance away from any mainland. I have sketches of the map I have been designing for the archipelago and I am just starting to unite them into a one, complete map of the area. I have used many different styles during my time with maps, and I don't have a certain favourite at the moment. Found this place purely by accidents while browsing through Pinterest, and interested immediately. I am looking forward to getting know this forum and posting my future maps here! I am just an amateur with drawing softwares, so I would be very grateful for pieces of advice of what kind of software might be useful. At the moment I have Krita and GIMP(just learning to use it). See you all in the future!

[Mouse]

Hello Flow!

Welcome to the Guild

There is a huge range of graphic software available on the market today, some of them are free apps like GIMP, KRITA, and Inkscape, and some are not, like PS, Corel and Affinity (Affinity is still very reasonably priced since it started out as a Mac app, and is a relative newcomer to the Windows market). If you are just starting out and you don't want to 'put all your eggs in one basket' as we say in the UK (by that I mean buy one app with all your spare cash and then regret that you didn't choose a different one), then I would suggest trying all the free apps first (GIMP, KRITA, Inkscape... etc), and see what suits you best. A lot of the apps offer free trials as well, but I find its best to get them one at a time, or its very easy to get muddled up if you are trying 3-4 at the same time.

There are also purpose made mapping apps like Campaign Cartographer 3, Fractal Mapper 8, and so on, but I don't think any of them are free (I might be wrong). They don't tend to be quite as expensive as the general graphics apps, though. I started with CC3, and now use a whole range of different software, including GIMP and KRITA - each app according to its strengths. You would be surprised how many mappers around here rely entirely on free software

If you don't mind wading through a lot of different threads discussing different types of software, the place to look is probably here, in Software Discussion.

The search bar above is quite useful if you are looking for information on something in particular, but if you want to know something that doesn't seem to have been covered on the forum please just ask, either here on this thread, or start a new one in the How do I forum