TIAM: Getting back on the horse.

So, you may have noticed that I missed a few days.  My cold got much worse for a bit and I just wasn't well enough to do much of anything.  I think I'm finally on the mend now, so I'm trying to get back into gear with this challenge.  Powering through missing days is a bit easier when there's some momentum but having it happen so early makes it easy to feel defeated.  It was so tempting to just give in and start the challenge over with some other tileset.

I got a very late start but thanks to some encouragement I did actually start today.  Nothing significant, just a few fence posts (not quite a fence yet) a decorative ground tile and a new carpet and interior wall tile.  I found a few errors on the newer tiles that I didn't get around to checking last time, but that's to be expected.  I wouldn't have gotten anything done without people telling me it was worth it, so thank you everyone who got me going.

BTW, I used a handy program today that I think is going to help a lot during this process.  It's called MagnifyPNG and it does exactly what it says, batch processes pngs to double size.  Checking out how things work in the editor is something I do regularly but it gets annoying when working on 16x16 tiles because I have to resize everything.  This tool should simplify it a bit and make checking things a little less of a pain.

TIAM: Keeping going

My cold got worse (at least, I hope it's just a cold), making today even harder than yesterday.  Two autotiles.  Some graves.  An animated swamp tile.  No idea if any of it actually is functional, I didn't feel like checking.  I'm moving forward but no where near quickly enough to make the goal.  At this rate I'll be spending most of the month playing catch up.

The important thing is that I am moving forward, even if it is just a small amount.  Something I've learned from all my various challenge attempts is that it's less about a huge effort and more about just putting the work in day after day, even if it stops being fun.  That and your brain likes to distract you with stupid things that don't matter because it doesn't want to do something so big.

So, it turns out that Despain doesn't have an animated base, apparently the one I thought was partial is all he uses.  He just animates each sprite individually.  I can work with that but it will be harder.  I may end up dropping the sprites anyway though, since Despain's next pack was supposed to be focused on characters and he's much better at them than I am.  We'll see how it goes.  I have lots of other interesting things I could do instead.

Here's hoping I feel better.  I'll be babysitting the rest of the week so things are only going to get harder.

TIAM: Work smarter, not harder

Hello again internet!  How many of you who said they'd play along with me are still doing it?  Please, tell me all about your progress in the comments.  We'll keep each other motivated 'till the end!

I made a whole lot of trees, some other plant types, more pumpkins (3 just wasn't enough), fixed up the garden tiles I started yesterday and started on a few of the sprites.  I'm still deeply missing the presence of a good orange and I realized I don't have a base to make the sprites from.  I asked Despain for one, but if that doesn't work I'm just going to have to skip making characters for this pack.  I'll fill in the gap with something else, icons or battlers or something.  It wasn't as much as I wanted to get done, but not bad at all considering how sick I've been feeling today.  I'm glad I built in a little leeway into my plans, but it worries me to be needing it so soon.

TIAM: Slow starts and palettes

I spent most of the day camping and only came home early because I was sick.  So my first day, while early, was still very short.  All I managed to make was a few pumpkins and an attempt at a garden patch.  I mostly used the day to get myself used to the way the original pack puts things together.  That's a fancy way of saying I spent too much time messing around with test maps and not enough time actually drawing.

Tileset in a month challenge!

I really like those "do something hard in a short time" challenges.  I join them all the time, often to fail spectacularly, but I don't mind (much).  I like the rush of trying really hard with other like minded challengers, and the structure of it helps me focus and be more creative.  Even if I don't make it to the finish line I've gotten farther on those fun projects than I would on my own.

This time I'm doing my own sort of challenge, one I made up for myself.  I have no idea if it'll work, since I'm missing the competitive element, but it's worth a try.  In the month of September I'm going to try and make a small art pack for RPG Maker.  If anyone wants to join me, they're more than welcome.

The first Pixel Myth set is finished!

Once apon a time I decided that I wanted to make all the art for an RPG.  I was quite young at the time and doing the typical young teen thing of trying to recreate the things I liked but I was also fully aware of just how very much work that would take.  I figured that if I was really stubborn and just worked at it a little at a time I'd eventually get there.  I firmly believed at that stage in life that all I really needed was to spend enough time polishing something and through sheer effort it would come out amazing.  This meant that I believed that no effort was wasted which is totally true, but I also didn't take as much time planning things out as I should have and I spent a little too much time on things I should have abandoned.  I spent a lot of time editing sprites, trying to create my own from scratch, and trying to figure out animation.  As I worked my focused shifted from making this one game to getting good enough at pixel art to make it and then to just enjoying making pixel art.  But the desire to make that RPG art stuck around.

Eventually I did get reasonably not awful and decided it was time to get to work on those RPG tiles.  I studied every tile making tutorial I could find.  I downloaded XP's RTP and stared at it for hours trying to figure out how it was done.  I looked at rips and screencaps of beautiful pixel art from famous console games.  Then I did something super smart and didn't look at any of those existing tiles and instead used real life references and started drawing tiles.  I also hung out at a community of amazing and professional pixel artist and with a lot of really great feedback and some hard work managed to make this:

 

Things to keep in mind when making a tileset for an RPG

So you want to make a tileset for your RPG.  "This shouldn't be too bad," you think, "there are all sorts of tutorials on the subject and doing art at that size shouldn't be hard."  STOP!  Go read Celianna's post and if you aren't overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work involved then you're entirely missing the point.  It's supposed to be overwhelming, I've been doing this for years and I'm still a bit overwhelmed by the massive amount of work that goes into making your game look unique.  If you're new to art as well expect that work load to be at least doubled, more likely quadrupled.  You've got a lot of learning to do on top of all that art you're expecting to draw.

The reason why I bring this up is simple.  You have to understand what you're getting into or you will fail.  I have run into so many budding pixel artists who make exactly one square of grass tile and think to themselves "Wow, that wasn't so bad.  I just need to do this a few more times and I've got a whole set!"  They then start working on the other tiles and by the time they reach the work load that they thought would be required to make the whole set they don't even have enough for a single screen of mockup and that half finished mockup doesn't even come close to what they saw in their heads.

This doesn't mean you can't do this or shouldn't try though.  Making art for an entire RPG is a huge endeavor but it also makes for a huge result.  Your game is now unique, interesting, and the art will be made specifically to suit it.  Because of it's rarity in independently made RPGs, original art makes for a lasting impression.

So, what exactly is involved in making a tileset for a game? Quite a bit actually.  Time, effort, artistry, consistency, and sometimes a bit of money to get the tools you need.  In other words, this is going to be a whole lot of work.  Here are some things to keep in mind when doing that work.