Creating ISO maps?

[Jelly_Donut]

Hey everyone! So I seem to be taking on more project than perhaps I can chew in pixel art (I've just started joining in on the fun world of the pixel, and am right now working on pixeling a photo, and animating 3 different sprites... but darnit I want to do some iso maps!)

So I'm wondering, how would I go about setting up ISO tiles and creating an ISO map? I'm using Photoshop cs2 as my weapon of choice, I don't really have any other software at the moment (other than illustrator, which is like the enemy of pixel art )

I'm having trouble finding tutorials and such. normally the first place I'd look is spriteart.com but what's his face took down his tutorials, which I'm thinking should be considered a dark and scary day in the history of pixel art. It's like the end of an era or something.

So any help anyone can give me would be MOST appreciated, thanks guys!

[Indigo]

contrary to what you may assume, creating iso pixelart does not necessarily have to be based on an isometric grid.  The best way is to work with 2:1 ratio tiles - such as 16x8 pixels.  What I usually do in photoshop is set up a 16x16 grid, with 2 subdivisions (resulting in 8x8 squares).  That will give be a nice grid for me to lay down all my isometric lines for me to draw on top of.

[ndchristie]

yes, I've used similar methods, however i find that the best is to do as indigo suggested using alpha and subdividing the grid once again vertically, so that you can arrange your diamonds.

photoshop i find clumsy for grids and pixels in general.  I suggest a program with an easy-to-use grid.  I love idraw because simply holding ctrl snaps to the unit grid (user defined of course) and releasing it releases snap - you can grab, for instance, ten of your frames perfectly while holding snap - then move them all up one or two pixels - a great tool for (re)aligning animations.  you could do the opposite, too, where you draw around your tile, pick it up, then hold ctrl to set it down again in perfect positioning.  It has all of the selection tools you're used to in photoshop (with the exception of the weird ones like magnetic lasso)


http://rpgmaker2000.narod.ru/files/iDraw332_e.zip