Tile-based Art Workflow

Does anyone have any suggestions for a good workflow for making tile sets? Right now, I've got a main character spritesheet, and some placeholder collision tiles so my character doesn't drop into infinity. Functional, but sad. What's a good way to start making those placeholder tiles turn into beautiful (or ugly) art assets?

I mean right now I open up photoshop, rub fruitlessly on my wacom, then close it because the blank canvas haunts me, and I can't even decide if I should make one little sad 32x32 pixel file at a time, or if I should try to somehow make the level whole cloth and then try to isolate and cut and paste something approaching tiles into a sheet from there.

If anyone with experience has any words of encouragement, or better yet a solid workflow I'd be elated!

--Until then, I will go back to crying into my tablet.

start with a few tiles (can be made inside construct) so you know the type of tiles it represent, build a simple structure that shows all you gonna use, like a test room: solid floor, jump floor, doors, chests, walls, decoration, object...

then you save as a project file so it will maintain the tiles .png now you can open the Photoshop(i use SAI because is lighter for my pc...) and pimp the tiles while you replace then inside the root arquive from the construct 2 project folder( and keep a backup project).

this way you dont need to rebuild the test room, while you still can see how the tiles work together.

after this i think the best way to build levels is using a tile editor like, DAME and build using the tiles you made and then export the map to construct

here is some 16x16 pixel art

and keep simple at the beginning, so you dont give up

hope it help

cincipon

know how you feel, I keep changing my mind with the tiles. I've made a tile background of grass, and want to add a path.. I'm stuck on if to do this as a tile or spirte, I'vedecided to work on other parts of the game first.

I'm really new to all this

good luck, hope you get some help

valdarko Thanks for the advice. I hadn't thought to make a project so I could easily update the files. This will also help with the animation workflow as well. As it stands I spend too much time saving/exporting/re-importing/repositioning origins.

Also, DAME looks very nice, now to find/create an XML importer.

mineet Thanks for the sympathy. I hope valdarko's reply helps you out as well. Good luck.

cincipon

thank you