I Need Help to Make Dungeon Tiles

[Selassin]

 Hi everyone, as much as I tried, I failed to make some good dungeon wall tiles(for a game), so I'm asking for your help. I don't have any art experience btw.

 First, I did this: As you can see, It's plain, simple, boring.

 Second: ugly.

 Third: like a wave.

 Fourth: again, boring. Actually I used this image from Castlevania as reference: but It's nowhere near to it.

 So, I'm asking for your help, I read lots of tutorials already but I'm open to any tutorial suggestions, as long as It helps me to make better tiles. Actually I need all kinds of help, suggestions, please!

 Thanks!

[Pix3M]

You can easily create something interesting to look at if you know that not every block needs to be the same size or shape.

[Selassin]

Oh, thanks for quick reply!

Ok, I understand that and I can see that I made this mistake at every tile, but my primary question is how can I make good/interesting tiles like Castlevania's. I don't understand what Is going on there, It looks like bunch of random pixels when I zoom in, but from far, It looks really good, I don't understand this magic.

[Tapsu]

maybe you might try to hint rather than force the viewer to see the blocks.

[Selassin]

Can you explain what do you mean by "hint" and "forcing"?

[Tapsu]

By forcing I meant you are trying to draw the outlines as rectangles too clearly, leaving the viewer no choice.

By hinting I meant it could be enough if the viewer thought: "there might be rectangular stone blocks."

That is just from the reference that you yourself provided in your first post.

[Selassin]

 Thanks, I'll update as soon as I can!

[Selassin]

Well, okay I understand the two suggestions, but what should I fill the bricks with? I still can't make something good because I still don't know what should the bricks filled with. I'm struggling to make something but it's a disaster, I can't fill the bricks. Is there any logic about this? I tried to thing like dirty parts, clear parts, shadows and highlights but I can't place them well enough. I see that at the Castlevania's example they used some dithering and some splattering, but I can't get anything from it.

[numlock]

I'm not very good at environment stuff but you can try taking actuall wall as reference I think, that way you'd make what you see instead of copying someone else's vision, your palette and other stuff is important aswell but you can balance contrast later if you have any problems with that.

[Selassin]

 Just a little hack... 

 This sucks, I really can't make tile, there is no logic I guess... Anyway, thank you all.