OCEANS PIXEL TUTORIAL

List of programs you can use

I was asked to make an article here, so while I haven't had time to make any new content, these are taken from my blog which you can visit. I am by no means a pro spriter, but I have added links to pixel art communities and tutorial links from talented pixel artists in my blog.


This was a Japanese style building I was asked to do. I kept the palette around so I can see what colors I've used. I try to keep the colors unique, so if I want to change the colors of the roof later, I don't accidentally change the colors of another part as well.

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Now, for water tiles. This is the default RTP water for RMVX.


I've set a grid for this. Remember to use the correct spots for water and waterfalls. There are 6 places for waterfalls, 2 for objects on water (like the rock and ice), and the rest is for water/lava.

You have 8 water auto-tiles which have 3 of them in a row. This is for the animation. It should go from 1 to 2 to 3 and back to 2 and 1 so it can cycle over.


I made 3 16×16 water tiles, that would animate. I made the animated ones green and pink so they stand out here.


Some of the water tiles have shadows on the left side, and a floor tile (with water above) on the top row of it. You can put these in if you want. If you have a program with layers, put the water tiles on a layer above the floor tile you want to use. Then make it semi-transparent (some have it as alpha channel). I did this in Graphics Gale. Add a layer, make sure it’s in 24 bit color, then reduce the alpha to about 100. For the shadows, it was a simple reducing of brightness for the selected water, but you could do a hue shift too which would get some better results.


I made a 16×16 waterfall tile. Then I shifted it down 6 pixels (the 6 pixels on the bottom get moved up to the top) for the 2nd waterfall tile. For the 3rd, I just repeated that process with 5. The animation goes from 1 to 2 to 3 to 1. So the reason I chose the shifting that way is because the tile is 16 pixels tall. 6 (first movement) + 5 (second movement) + 5 (back to the first) = 16. You can play around with this of course but I thought that worked well enough for me.

You should test your tiles out in RMVX to make sure it works as you think it does.

Let me know if any part of this could be phrased better or if I didn't explain something sufficiently. I hope to sometime make a bunch of tutorials on how the graphics in the RPG Maker series work for those who want to start making their own tilesets/graphics. I have a few in my blog:
RMVX wall
RMVX auto-tiles
RM2k3 icons
RM2k3 auto-tiles part 2
RM2k3 auto-tiles


Ocean's pixel blog