Where to begin

[Prospero]

Greetings everyone!

It is a pleasure to join this community. I was brought here by the fantastic work of Steffen Brand, specifically his maps for Degenesis.
I am very interested in making maps of my own for a post apocalyptic tabletop project inspired by works such as Metro 2033, Degenesis and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

I would greatly appreciate any help in getting started, be it tutorials or program suggestions, i am personally proficient in photoshop but I'm unsure if it would be the right program for creating maps.

Thank you in advance for any help/suggestions

[Kellerica]

Hi there! Can't blame you for admiring Steffen's work - he's an extremely talented artist, easily one of my favorites on the Guild right now. Glad you followed his trail here!

For my money, absolutely do go with Photoshop if you are already familiar with it and have access to it. It is an amazing tool for mapping. I've personally used very little nothing else for years, save for the rare occasion when I'm designing icons and symbols for my maps, and feel like I need a proper vector software to do it (and even here Photoshop's vector tools serve my needs 99% of the time).

The Guild has some amazing tutorials to figure out how to utilize PS for mapping. At the very least, I'd recommend the Saderan tutorial and the Jezelf series, and maybe the Ascension Atlas guide and this little thread tutorial as well. I'd work through these at least once, even if you don't quite feel like they are what you are looking for style-wise, as they include a lot of fantastic ideas you can adapt to an extremely wide variety of things, once you have a good handle on them.

Whatever software you end up using, I hope you'll get started with your maps. Please do feel free to post a WIP thread in the forum should you feel like getting some tips or feedback from fellow members. I look forward to seeing what you'll create.

Welcome to the Guild! If there is anything you need, just holler.

[DrWho42]

hello and welcome to the guild! steffen does fine work indeed.

[JoshStolarz]

Welcome to the Guild, I'm glad you found us . Your project definitely sounds interesting and there are a bunch of good tutorials floating around here to get you started. Definitely check out that section of the forum!

- Josh

[Tiana]

A proficiency in Photoshop is all you need. I've used it to make maps. I don't anymore. It was imperfect for my workflow. I have not found perfect. Lazy Nuzmei is an amazing hack though, for any program, and I think it's one of the best low budget add-ons you can get. Welcome to the guild.