I'm going to show you how to go from a basic layout to a finished top-down world using tiling
Tiling is an important technique when creating art for games because it can help you build
worlds more quickly, so I challenged everyone to make a top down world using
tiles. For this challenge we're working in a game boy resolution the tiles must be 16
pixels by 16 pixels and we must include these things. But before I go over your entries,
here's how I did mine I usually start off by brainstorming ideas.
and I decided to go with a little yeti village. We'll have a little pathway,
a frozen lake, a shop where an npc sells some fish, a hidden collectible pickaxe,
all surrounded by trees and rocks. Sort of like a top-down Zelda-like adventure game
because that idea is completely original and everything. With the canvas and grid set up
I started off with a basic tile for the path, the tree, the ice, the building, and the rock.
Erm... Not that rock! Starting off with a basic tile for each thing
will allow you to create a rough layout for yourself which you'll be able to use as a guide.
You can make entire worlds out of a basic tile set but I wanted to make mine more visually
interesting so this is what I did. Looking at the path I could turn this tile into a corner
or I can thin out the path so it doesn't fill the full grid spaces and then I can
turn this into a little crossroad tile and now a single path tile has turned into this
tile set uh remember that you can flip tiles horizontally and vertically if you need to as well
there's no point drawing something over and over again just work smart not hard. The ice
is a little bit more complicated because it has a pattern to it with patterns and advanced tiles I
find it easiest to start from the centre and work my way out from there. Uh the smart ones among
you might notice that I can't just flip certain tiles as well because the pattern won't match so
these are essential tiles that I'd have to draw in as well but remember to be careful
and keep referring to your guide because you can go absolutely mental thinking of different
variations that you might not need. That top right bottom left corner connecting piece that you
spent an hour figuring out might not be essential after all not that I'd know anything about that.
The trees are interesting if we put them together in a forest like grid it looks pretty bare.
A nice styling technique I found for this is to make a copy of your grid
then just offset it now we have a more dense forest it's easy peasy tiling trees..y.
Kill me. The building looks quite small this would work for an overworld type
view in a game like final fantasy or as seen here by a28604407 who took part in
this challenge too awesome work by the way. But for mine I wanted to make the building
bigger to really show off the NPC and maybe some sort of fish sign because it is a fish shop.
So instead of a single 16 pixel tile I split the building into multiple tiles like this with this
tile system you can easily create different variations of your building for your world.
So now our layout looks a little bit more interesting and we have a nice guide for all
of our required tiles it's time to actually start making the tiles the actual ones the
ones with stuff, perspective and style and things.
I usually work in black and white values first so I don't have to think about value structure
and value contrast and color theory and color harmonies and all these different things at the
same time. I tried eyeballing the perspective to start off with and it just kind of looks wrong, it
looks like we're viewing these things at different angles so to counter this it's helpful to create a
guide block and use that as a base for building assets when I'm designing things I try to think
about the overall world and not just a singular asset because everything has to fit together I
wanted this world to have sort of a soft feel so all of the shapes in my assets are rounded
as opposed to being sharp I have made a video on shape theory if you want to check that out
but take that advice with a pinch of salt, it's really just the basic guide to get you started
and thinking about shapes because my design is supposed to be a game mock-up I try and
highlight the most important part of the scene. I first do this with value contrast the sign the
pickaxe the store they all have dark values so they contrast nicely against the snowy floor.
In comparison the tree and the path values are lighter and much closer to that of the
snow so they contrast less and don't stand out as much because they're just not as important
for the gameplay. I also added an outline to these interactable or important parts
to help them stand out even more here's a quick tip for adding snow to an object
first create the base object then add snow to the top planes where the snow will naturally lie
one important thing to mention with this by the way is I never get anything right the first time
it's all a process of experimenting and using the art theory that I know...
...to improve things as I go along.
To add colors to this I first make sure all the assets are separated
then I add a layer above in color mode which preserves the black and white values underneath.
It's really easy to apply colours this way and I mess around with this trying to limit
my colour choices I went for a sort of yellow and purple complementary scheme to start with
and then just kept tweaking it I wanted it to be more vibrant and colder feeling so I pushed the
purples towards blue and up the saturation in some areas I made sure the palette was shared between
assets so I didn't just have random colors going on everywhere. I even gave the black outlines a
purple tint to slightly decrease the contrast so they're less harsh to look at. I think the final
palette is quite charming and actually achieves what I was going for, so I'm pretty happy with
it. So this is my final piece for the challenge let me know what you think in the comments.
To finish it up I animated a couple of frames for some of the objects and then added in some falling
snowflakes. Make sure you check out my videos on animation if you want to learn how to animate,
but wait a minute before you click off the video there's more because you guys also took part in
this challenge. Before I show all of them here's a handful that I picked out to talk
about everything works together so well in this one and I can definitely imagine playing a game
in this style we had a similar idea with the blue and orange color palette but this one uses greens
as an accent color to push it just a little bit further they even created this nice start menu too
to go along with it awesome work. Check out this awesome two-player snowball fighting game mock-up
this one is really striking and creative, all of the important aspects like the snowball the
power-ups and the characters all stand out against the background which is really smart for game art
design, the ui elements are a really nice touch too awesome work thanks so much for taking part. I
love this one because it looks uncomfortably cold. In mine, I went for blue is cold but in this one
the desaturated colors and the patches of grass that are showing up through the snow make this a
relatable but uncomfortable environment nice work. This one looks really cohesive as if it's part
of this huge world, i love the forced perspective on the house and obviously the use of outlines on
the characters and interactables is really smart for a game art design. This one has really strong
vibes going on, reminds me of a classic NES game or game boy color game or something.
I would definitely play this. Thanks so much to everyone for taking part unfortunately I can't
feature everyone's submissions but at least wanted to show them all in a slideshow now. I really
appreciate every single one of you for taking part and if you're watching this and want to take part
in some challenges then make sure you come and join the discord and follow me on social media
and if you want to learn more check out this pixel art playlist there's some tutorials
and challenges in there that you might find interesting so thanks for watching everyone
make sure you're subscribed if you haven't already and I'll see you in the next video.
right,
It's pretty cold in here.