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Thread: Hi! a newby here and there...

  1. #1
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    Post Hi! a newby here and there...

    Hi everyone!
    long time ago I wandered into this wonderful website as a cartographer of real and imaginary world.
    I'd worked for mapping companies (town maps and local maps for residents and tourisme informations too.
    On the other hand I drew a lot of maps by hand (a this very time the computers didn't exist yet... or the rare and huge bitty boxes were too expensive and unusable to draw any map, even a mere rectangle. the ones which came after - in the early 80s - were no suitable too... Nowadays is another matter!!!)

    I like old maps and my artwork was influenced by these old prints.
    Thus I drew a lot of maps for RPG using the black and white drawing the ancient mapmakers used to render the land and mountains.

    Today I resume the old project to redraw it by computer: it's an entire world (a planet)! a silly guy's work, of course, as usual we can see on this website.
    The challenge is: the original maps are draw on (very!) large paper sheets, that I couldn't scan easily without lost the quality. So, I photocopied the maps to get a lot of sheet, then to scan these sheets and set up the whole thing into the computer, thank to Photoshop... Of course the file are big big big...
    Then I'm drawing the new maps with Affinity Designer, a good software for the mapmaker, better than Illustrator IMO.

    In a few times maybe I should post some of the WIP maps of the project.

  2. #2

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    Wow a whole world! Looking forward to see it.

    Affinity seems like a great competition to Adobe. I am waiting for Affinity Photo on windows to switch from Photoshop. As good as the PS is, i hate subscription model. They just stealing our money.

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    Hi Patrick, and welcome! I'm also a fan of old maps, so I'll look forward to seeing what you create. I've had an eye on Affinity Designer for a while and I actually signed up for the free Windows beta. My main PC runs Linux though, so I've used it, hmmm, maybe once. It looks like really decent software though, and a fantastic price compared to PS/Illy. I'll look forward to seeing your work.
    "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"

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    Wip First preview of my map

    Hi everyone,

    as I told you in my first post, there is the first preview of my map. elysean-regional map.png
    Sea, lakes and graticules drawn with Affinity Designer.
    Shaded mountains with Affinity Photo (in the future...)
    Master map created with Fractal Terrain (current background of the map but not the final, of course).

    A lot of things to do yet...

    The world of Elysean (temporary name) should be used for a Sci-Fi/med-fan RPG.

    The challenge is to make a kind of atlas, from where regional and local maps will be used for the game itself.

    Yes, the Affinity's software is very useful and reliable to draw maps... for the real world or an imaginary one.

    I'll open a thread about this work soon.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Voolf View Post
    Wow a whole world! Looking forward to see it.

    Affinity seems like a great competition to Adobe. I am waiting for Affinity Photo on windows to switch from Photoshop. As good as the PS is, i hate subscription model. They just stealing our money.
    I think so! using the Affinity for a while now I can tell you that both Affinity Designer and Photo can compete against Adobe without a bit of subscription! Of course we'd miss some tools they should come soon.
    Designer is far better than AI... i.e. the zoom is a true infinite tool... You can zoom as you need (more 80000 %)
    For the price I'm sold to the Affinity series!!!

    In the past I used Frrehand, a very reliable soft for mapping. When Adobe killed that wonderful tool, I missed it and never AI replaced it. Now Affinity Designer walks on the path of Freehand, and, more, can open the FH10 and FH11 files!!!! waow! All of my old files can be opened now. Great!
    Now I'm waiting for Affinity Publisher, the InDesign killer...
    ps. I work on Mac OS (since 1984!). However I also use Fractal Terrain under Windows I run through VMware Fusion.

    You can see my first map I've inserted into my previous post. I'll open a future thread about this WIP.

  6. #6

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    Hello Patrick Welcome to the Guild!

    This looks like it could become an awesome map.

    I'm pretty sold on the idea of getting the windows version of Affinity myself - when it comes out - to use in tandem with my Campaign Cartographer 3 software. I currently use Corel Photoshop and Corel Draw to manufacture whatever new symbols I need for myself - to use in CC3+ (Fractal Terrains is one of its add ons), but my versions of Photopaint and Draw are very old and crash without warning now that Win 10 has come out. 15 year old Corel software can't seem to reach an agreement with Win 10 about just how much Active Memory its allowed to use!!!

    You would probably get more views and comments on your map if you start a Work In Progress (WIP) thread in the WIP forum - choosing a suitable sub-category. That way people who are interested in how you work with on this project will be able to find your threads a lot easier

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