Hi
I was just wondering if anybody could tell me what the best approach to creating low spec game tiles from hand drawn sketches would be?
Should I create my illustrations first without much consideration for tiling then scan them into Photoshop & use the offset filter etc to create tiles or should I draw my whole illustration with tiling in mind from the very beginning? Using a grid maybe?
Adapting what you draw to the grid of edges that need to be matched lets you retouch localized seams instead of butchering large regions of your art with auto-tiling filters. Good tile edges fall either in the middle of something unique that doesn't have to match other tile edges elsewhere (e.g. middle and left part of a building) or in clone tool-friendly areas of flat or very fine-grained texture (e.g. sky and grass); only matching visible structures across different tile edges is difficult.
Depending on the content of your tiles, you might be able to assemble compatible tile edges from layered transparent sprites; for example you could make compatible and varied hedge tiles from a number of little tree sprites, arranging the same trees at the same offsets close to tile edges and varying the ones in the middle that have no impact on tiling.
Maybe you can also trace over a printed reference when drawing to let the computer take care of aligning structures.
