gamerprinter
Mapper/Publisher
Soon I'll be starting a Kickstarter to fund the creation of a line of educational books offering detailed map tutorials using any standard graphics application, including: Xara Photo and Graphic Designer, Photoshop, GIMP, Paintshop Pro, Illustrator, Inkscape, CorelDraw, and many other similar applications. The first book (and first goal of the Kickstarter) will be 25 Quick & Dirty Map Tutorials Guide.
Each tutorial consists 9 to 15 steps, with 3 steps per page (each step has a corresponding map in progress thumbnail, beside the step description), thus 3 to 5 pages per tutorial, followed by a full page version of the map in the final step, then 3 sample maps using the same technique as the tutorial. Altogether 7 to 9 pages for each tutorial, at 25 tutorials, so the tutorial section of the book consists of at least 175+ pages of the guide book (probably closer to 200 pages.)
The tutorials section will be preceded by: about author and introduction, followed by an Explanation of Terms. This chapter describes the instructions given in each tutorial and which tools or techniques used in several other major design applications to duplicate the step. A subsection for Photoshop, GIMP, Xara and Inkscape (at least those) will be included. This will be followed by a Resources chapter giving links to online sources for photo textures, fonts, map objects and more.
The 25 Quick & Dirty Map Tutorials Guide book, if funded, is intended to be a softcover, full color interior printed book and PDF of approximately 248 pages long.
If we can fund the first book, I'd like to fund and release 25 Advanced Quick & Dirty Map Tutorials Guide, Hand-Drawn Techniques for Mapping Guide, Using 3D Elements in Mapping Guide, Sound Geography and Geology for Mapping, a set of Old West Hand-Drawn Map Objects, and more as Kickstarter stretch goals.
So far, I have a website setup for the project: Quick and Dirty Map Tutorials, and a Google+ community to serve as a forum for the site.
Who needs these books?
I will post a link to the Kickstarter, once that begins.
I hope you join the project, become a contributor when the Kickstarter begins, and help spread the word. There are no other books like these on the market - we need your help to make them a reality!
Below is a rough draft tutorial as originally posted on the Google+ community to give you an idea what my tutorials are really about and whether they have any value to you (note: the published version will be better presented with more textual description)
Each tutorial consists 9 to 15 steps, with 3 steps per page (each step has a corresponding map in progress thumbnail, beside the step description), thus 3 to 5 pages per tutorial, followed by a full page version of the map in the final step, then 3 sample maps using the same technique as the tutorial. Altogether 7 to 9 pages for each tutorial, at 25 tutorials, so the tutorial section of the book consists of at least 175+ pages of the guide book (probably closer to 200 pages.)
The tutorials section will be preceded by: about author and introduction, followed by an Explanation of Terms. This chapter describes the instructions given in each tutorial and which tools or techniques used in several other major design applications to duplicate the step. A subsection for Photoshop, GIMP, Xara and Inkscape (at least those) will be included. This will be followed by a Resources chapter giving links to online sources for photo textures, fonts, map objects and more.
The 25 Quick & Dirty Map Tutorials Guide book, if funded, is intended to be a softcover, full color interior printed book and PDF of approximately 248 pages long.
If we can fund the first book, I'd like to fund and release 25 Advanced Quick & Dirty Map Tutorials Guide, Hand-Drawn Techniques for Mapping Guide, Using 3D Elements in Mapping Guide, Sound Geography and Geology for Mapping, a set of Old West Hand-Drawn Map Objects, and more as Kickstarter stretch goals.
So far, I have a website setup for the project: Quick and Dirty Map Tutorials, and a Google+ community to serve as a forum for the site.
Who needs these books?
- Gamemasters who need maps that are print ready, or ready to use in their favorite Virtual Tabletop applications for their home games.
- RPG and board game designers looking to design their own maps, or want to improve their workflow getting their maps from concept to cartographer - saving time and money.
- Anyone wanting to learn how to better use their graphics applications in a fun way.
I will post a link to the Kickstarter, once that begins.
I hope you join the project, become a contributor when the Kickstarter begins, and help spread the word. There are no other books like these on the market - we need your help to make them a reality!
Below is a rough draft tutorial as originally posted on the Google+ community to give you an idea what my tutorials are really about and whether they have any value to you (note: the published version will be better presented with more textual description)
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