Hi there!

[George Marques]

My name is George and I'm 23 years old. I live in Brazil working (roughly) as a musical producer.

Since I was a kid I wanted to become a novel writer and now I'm finally trying yo make this dream come true (I was too lazy to do it before). I did wrote some tales and short stories but now I'm working on a much bigger plane.

With the book's development I found myself willing to create not only a story but a whole world (Tolkien is really my major inspiration, though Christopher Paolini and recently George Martin really contributed to that). And with a world there's history, cultures, politics, religions, languages (in which I'm working the most recently) and, of course, maps! And that's why I'm ended showing up here.

Though I am no plastic artist in any way, I did some drawings (actually eyesight copies of drawings) which became reasonably good. I tried the manga style, as I like the systematic way of how it works, but I wasn't so good of creating characters so I stopped. I think if I push myself I'm able to draw a world map by myself (my main wish here). Also, I did had successfully followed tutorials in Photoshop and other programs (yet not about cartography), so the technology itself is not a problem.

I'm looking, at first, to learn how to do the basics and, if possible, someone who might help me doing this project. The map itself is not a major requirement for the book but it'd add another dimension of "reality" which I'd like to show. Actually I did some astronomical calculations to put the planet in a plausible position in space. That lead me to a "surface area" which is my major concern on doing myself a map.

Anyway, as always, I'm willing to learn (as I learn a lot of linguistics and some astrophysics) and any help would be appreciated.

[arsheesh]

Hi there George, welcome to the Guild! you are in good company. Many writers have come to these forums with exactly the same goal as you have. It sounds like you've already got your feet wet with fantasy mapping, and have an idea of what you want to do. However you might still want to browse the tutorials section as you'll find allot of great aids there for making maps in various styles (using various forms of software). Also, you might take a peek at the finished maps section, look for styles that you like, and see if you can figure out how they did it (sometimes there will be a tutorial for that style). Finally, once you decide to get started, I'd recommend posting a work-in-progress image so that you can receive helpful feedback early on. Well, best of luck to you, and I look forward to seeing your stuff.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[Gidde]

Welcome aboard As Arsheesh said we have a lot of writers in here making maps for their writing (I'm one of them!) Best of luck!

[George Marques]

Thanks people. I already took a peek in the quickstart guide and I don't even know where to begin!

I tried to follow one of the tutorials and found myself doing this:
Map1-atlas-style.jpg
I think it's not that bad for a first try (I made some mistakes with the brushes) but it give me confidence to keep trying. I'm now sure I found the right place

[Gidde]

I can't follow that link, try deleting and reattaching? (click Edit Post -- or just reply again -- then click Go Advanced and click the Manage Attachments button that appears below your new/edited post)

[George Marques]

I edited the message and fixed it

[Gidde]

Much better Looks pretty good! Looking forward to seeing the next WIP.