Greetings / What advise do you have for a beginner?

[The Elderly Cartographer]

Hello guild-members,
As I said in an earlier post, I have kept up with the guild for a number of years, but I have now joined, and am wanting know the low-down on how thing work (eg. Challenges, forum, and so forth.).

Basically, what was the questions you had when you where just beginning? And what advise would you give?

Sincerely,
Josiah Yarbrough

[Kellerica]

Glad you decided to join us properly! I hope the Community Leaders don't mind me typing this out; I'm not really a part of the forum staff, but I've been here a few years already and feel like I know the place well enough to give you a little tour. (CL folk, no toe-stepping intended! )

All in all, this is a pretty relaxed community, and as far as I know we don't really have that strict rules other than the ones of basic human decency. Be polite, treat others well, and you'll be treated well in kind. Everyone here is super friendly and welcoming, and this is honestly one of the warmest communities online.



If you are looking for tips and tutorials to get you started, we do have a "Quickstart Guide" for mapping related matters, that might be worth checking out.



Now, you mentioned the Mapping Challenges! These are some of the forum's finest features.

We have two kinds of monthly challenges: a Lite Challenge, that usually starts around mid-month, and a Regular Challenge (or just 'Challenge'), that usually starts at the beginning of each month.
You can find the current Lite Challenge here, and the current Regular Challenge here, or by just scrolling down the forum main page.

As you can see, each of those areas has a sticky with the Challenge rules, that everyone should read, but the short and sweet version is basically this: the CL's give a brief for the map one must create for the Challenge, and a deadline for when the map must be finished. In order to take part, one must create a new thread with the challenge info in the title, and post their work in that thread. The maps must be started for this challenge only, so previous unfinished work is not accepted. When the deadline comes around, the threads get locked. Winner (or in some case winners, we have had a few ties every now and then) will be determined by a vote that every Guild member can partake in. Regular Challenge winners get a Golden Compass icon that you can see under their user name, and Lite winners a Silver Compass (like the one you can see under my user name there).

Regular Challenges are open to every member of the Guild.
Lite Challenges are open to all members, but excluding those that have already won either 3 Silver Compasses or one Gold.

In addition to this, we also have the annual Atlas Awards, sometimes referred to as the Annual Challenge, where Guild members get to nominate and vote on maps completed over the year. The Atlas winners have Golden Globe icons under their username to indicate their success. More info on the Atlas Awards here.



Some other basic things: we have the Finished Maps section, where (as you might guess) people can showcase their finished mapping works. If you have something to share, please don't hesitate to open a new thread!

Then there is the WIP area, which is generally the best place to get feedback on maps you are currently working on. Separate sections for Regional/World, Cities, Dungeons and so on, so please post your works accordingly. General & Miscellaneous is always a good bet if you are not quite sure where your work fits, or if you are working on multiple pieces at the same time.

Then you have the Mapping Resources area, that has a whole lot of good stuff hidden away.

The Tutorials section is a gold mine for any beginner or more seasoned map-maker. There are some fantastic tutorials available here. Don't overlook any simply because they are old, most of them are still extremely useful to this day. I can safely say that everything I myself know about mapping and digital artwork, I have learned here.

There's also the How Do I??? area, where you can post any mapping questions you might have. Being as specific as you can usually yields the best advice!

Mapping elements and Reference material both also have a lot of great things that can be extremely helpful, so be sure to check them out as well.



One final thing: You'll most likely sooner or later notice people talking about rep. Rep basically stands for your reputation in this community, and it's something that every member can give and receive. You can give rep to another user by clicking the little star icon underneath their post (right next to the "Blog this Post" text). Usually people tend to Rep posts with maps they like, but sometimes you can get repped for helpful or otherwise worthy comments too. So basically, whatever you feel like deserves it, rep it. You'll get notified on your profile when someone has repped you. This thread has more info on the subject, if my explanation is not clear enough (it's probably worth mentioning that I'm not a native English speaker... )



I think that's all I can think about for now! Sorry for the wall of text - I hope this was at least a little bit helpful. Just take a good look around, and you'll get the hang of it in no time. If you ever need a helping hand with anything specific, just holler.

Welcome to the Guild!

Cheers,
Kell

[The Elderly Cartographer]

Thank you, Kellerica, this is exactly the kind of information I was looking for. And thank you for taking the time to type it out for me.
Furthermore, your English is better than many locals.

Sincerely,
Josiah

[Argentum]

Thank you, Kellerica, for your thorough response! I've been a long time account-less lurker of the Finished Maps section, then made an account but continued lurking. Your post is very helpful, especially since I hope to eventually partake in some mapmaking myself.

[Kellerica]

My pleasure, guys! Glad to have helped. And like I said, if you need anything don't hesitate to ask.

[Tiana]

My advice is "draw a lot" and "look at a lot of other people's work". The worst thing an artist could do is become too afraid of their own art to make it, and yet somehow I've found myself in that hole (usually when faced with a challenge). And the advice I would have given to myself in that state was, "just go doodle some unimportant things for fun then." There's always the monthly challenges if you don't have ideas or projects to keep yourself creating, I think they're a great way to practice cartography or get yourself out of a rut or try something you haven't tried before. There's two types of challenges, one's easier, one's harder, but anyone can enter any of them at any time unless you win a certain amount of the 'lite' challenges. And I suppose you could still take the prompt if you were inspired. Right now though, they're all open to you.

Welcome and I hope you enjoy your time here. I guess if you experience any hiccups in your art you can bring it here and ask and we'll try to help you, there's lots of very knowledgable people here who answer questions on map making, several solid tutorials–I have learned really all I know from skulking on the Guild for free. xP It's an incredible resource for cartographers in the modern age and whether you want to get better at making maps or find someone who can make you a map, this is the place to be.

It looks to me like you want to have a signature graphic and just put it at the end of your post instead. What you can do is right click on that image and copy the image URL, go into your settings and find the 'edit signature' area on the side bar, and then put that URL in between tags like this. [img]www.image.jpg[/img] and save that.

Then your signature logo will always show up at the bottom of your posts.

[The Elderly Cartographer]

Thank you, Tiana.
I will certainly keep that advice in mind.

At the time of the first post, I could not personalize my profile, so I placed my logo in the post.
But thanks for telling me. I actually just customized my signature, I hope it appears right.

[Hai-Etlik]

My advice is to think about the map before you start drawing:

What is the map for? Each map has a purpose, and good maps are designed to fulfil their particular purpose be it navigation (which is going to depend on the kind of navigation), displaying thematic data (like a weather map), or reference (like an atlas)

Who is making the map? If you are trying to make a fictional map, is the map itself meant to represent an artefact of that fictional world? If it is then someone made it and you need to consider their particular technical knowledge of navigation and cartography, the information available to them and how it was gathered, and the tools available to them for map making. If you toss filters and textures, and map symbols around willy nilly without thinking them through logically, you'll end up with a very obviously computer generated map. If the map is meant to evoke medieval level technology (medieval Europe really didn't do much cartography) but looks like it was produced using modern surveying or remote sensing data, it will look anachronistic.

What shape is your world and where is your map on it? This is really important and if you get this wrong you can end up with a map that doesn't make sense. It's entirely possible to put together a map that only work if the world is simultaneously flat, spherical, and doughnut shaped. This becomes more important if you want to include elements that suggest certain kinds of precision, particularly those associated with navigation like graticules (grids), linear scales, and compass roses. It also gets more difficult as you deal with larger portions of the world (in geography jargon is called "small scale" as the features of the map are drawn small, while "large scale" draws them larger. It's how big things in the map are, not how big the area covered by the map is, that's "extent" not "scale")

Some other advice:

Be wary of just copying elements of other maps without understanding them. Something you see on one real life map may not make sense on your map. Copying an alphanumeric locator grid from a modern road map onto a high fantasy map will just look wrong. There's also a bit of a tendency among fantasy artists to copy each other's bad habits, or to copy really prominent maps to the point it becomes a bad habit (See Left Justified Fantasy Map. Be warned that's a link to TV Tropes and TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life.)

Don't be afraid of empty space. Don't try to fill frame of your map neatly with features (rectangularitis) and try to avoid swamping all the important details of your map with decorations, patterns, and filters. Sometimes fitting your features neatly into a map can make sense if the world was designed that way, or if the map is highly stylized like a medieval "mappa mundi"

Detail and contrast are finite resources so spend them wisely. Only include what you need to include and only in as much detail as you need. Maximize contrast between important things so they are visible and recognizable. If your background is in the middle of the colour space, then you only have half the contrast possible as if you had it on the edge. That's why maps usually have light backgrounds, especially if they need to show lots of point and line details. Similarly, noise filters and high contrast textures use up a range of the available contrast leaving less for the content of the map.

Labels are hard. They might seem simple, but they aren't. In my opinion, good labelling is what separates cartographers from geographers, illustrators, graphic designers, or anyone else who happens to be drawing maps. If you want a well labelled map, expect to spend a significant portion of the time and effort behind it just on that.

[Hardacre]

Really good advice thanks Hai-Etlik. As a beginner this kind of guidance is invaluable. I couldn't agree more on labeling, I massively underestimated this on my first map.

[Hardacre]

Thanks Kellerica, a really useful summary. I have been blundering around the site for the last few day and this has really helped me understand how it all fits together.