YOUMAYBEINTERESTEDINTHESEVECTORS

03/10/2016

REN HERNNDEZ

How to create a pixel room in Adobe Photoshop

Tutorial Details: Create an Isometric Pixel Art Bedroom
Program: Adobe Photoshop CS6 CC 2015
Di

culty: Intermediate

Topics Covered: Pixel Art, Isometric

Estimated Completion Time: 40 minutes

Create an Isometric Pixel Art Bedroom

In this tutorial you will learn to create a bedroom in the isometric view. It will continue to be compatible with our pixel
art assets from previous tutorials; if you havent yet, check those out
rst, especially the character tutorial. But if youre
ready,
re up Adobe Photoshop and lets get to work on this interior scene, taking your pixel art to the next level.
1. Designing the Bed
A bedroom is, of course, de
ned by the bed and since thats the largest piece of furniture well make for our room, it is
the only reasonable starting point.
Step 1
Well take our character and use it to
gure out the scale of our bed.
You can make a double, queen, king, or whatever monarch, er, size you want. Ill keep most of the elements minimal so
Ill make a single bed.
Compared to the character, this size seems
ne. The line, of course, is 2:1 (2 px horizontal for every 1 px vertical) which
you can draw with the Line Tool (Anti-pes o ), or with the Pencil tool either drawing pixel by pixel or holding down
shift while clicking two pixels.

Step 2

The bed should be just longer than the characters height, you can eyeball it or you could also rotate your character
(63) just to ensure he should
t lying down.

Step 3
Having an L, all we need is to duplicate it to get a rectangle. Select it, Rotate 180 (Edit > Transform > Rotate 180)
and place it, and presto!
I remove the leftmost and rightmost single pixels to get just slightly smoother shapes.

Step 4
Weve got the width and length of the bed so now we give it the height we want. Copy the rectangle, Paste in a New
Layer and place it where you think the proportions look ok and where it makes sense for the character.
You can then Merge Down (Layer > Merge Down) to the original layer.

Step 5
Lets get rid of the back lines of the bottom rectangle. Well keep only the two lowest lines for it.

Step 6
Which we then Select and duplicate to set the height of certain areas of the bed. Bottom to top the lines here are:
footprint or shadow, bottom line for base of the bed, top line for base of the bed (or bottom for the mattress.)

Step 7
Add vertical lines connecting the bottom to the top corners (except for the shadow line.)
The shadow will be transparent black but its early for
nal colors and working with transparencies can be messy so for
now I give it a solid color, di erent than the outlines color.

Step 8
I have a simple but slightly modern bed design in mind but if you want to draw your own bed or di erent design from
this, give that a try.
What Ill do for now will be add lines to stand for a headboard.

Step 9

To avoid the headboard looking cardboard thin we give it a little bit more volume; I moved all of the headboard area
down (1 px) and toward the center of the bed (2 px) and then redrew the rightmost and top outlines.

Step 10
Well add legs to the bed. Ill make mine be not directly on the edges of the bed frame but a touch toward the interior.
So in red Ive drawn the footprints Ill use for the legs. Remember to keep these distances consistent.

Step 11
Here are my leg outlines completed.

Step 12
I dont plan to continue to edit the bottom area of the bed so I now make my shadow transparent. You can do this by
selecting the temporary shadow color with the Magic Wand Tool (Anti-alias o ) hitting delete and then set the Paint
Bucket Tool to black at or around 15% opacity and then clicking on the selection.

Step 13
Now lets pick a color for the base and headboard of the bed. Ill give all of that a wood
nish so Im giving my color a
hue of 30 and a saturation of 75%, you can adjust and
nd colors you like by playing around with the
hue/saturation/lightness sliders (Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation)

Step 14
After getting a color you like, you should shade the sides of your object. Typically I make the top surface lightest and
the right facing surface darkest. Resulting in three basic shades, with colors varying by 10-20% brightness.

Step 15
After shading, the next usual step is adding an even lighter shade as a highlight, only to the peaking corners. For the
moment thats just the small, frontmost, corner of the base.

Step 16
Feel free to be more detailed with your textures but I
nd that a simple isometric checkered kind of grid works
ne to
convey wood grain.
You can start by covering the whole area the texture will be applied to with the pattern/texture youll use. Do this in a
New Layer.

Dont worry about the texture being too harsh, well adjust that in a minute.

Step 17
Now, on the bed layer, using the Magic Wand Tool, select all the wood color youve been adding. Then going back to
the texture layer, Invert the Selection (Select > Inverse) and hit delete.

Step 18
Now play around with the Layer Opacity. You can shortcut this by pressing any number while the Move Tool or the
selection tools are active. If you press 1, that gives the layer an opacity of 10%, which is very subtle and might be good
enough, but feel free to try higher.

Step 19
You can then Merge Down into the bed layer and continue to
ll the mattress with color. Going with pretty much
white for some sheets.

Step 20
Same basic rules as when coloring the base. A lighter shade on the top, medium on left, darker on right + highlights on
the peak corners.

Step 21
Now select all those new colors with the Magic Wand Tool, Copy and Paste them in a New Layer and make a new set
of colors for the whole mattress. Well give the covers two colors.

Step 22
Shorten the length of the mattress colors in the new layer to reveal the white covers.

Step 23
Then add soft outline breaking the two areas of colors. Use a shade slightly darker than the darkest of the two (so in
this case, the newer colors.)
Then once done, you can Merge Down.

Step 24
Lets add a small pillow.
In a New Layer, draw a rectangle that will make the bottom of the pillow, it should be centered on the bed unless
your character isnt tidy.

Step 25

Give the rectangle some height.

Step 26
Then clean up the lines,
ll with color and soften some edges, because pillows are soft!

Step 27
Add shading to the pillow and optionally, soften the outlines where the pillow and covers meet.

Step 28
If you want, continue to soften these valley corners. I replaced the black with a dark wood color wherever the
mattress elements and wood areas met.

Step 29
To
nish the bed I slightly rounded o the two frontmost corners, to give the bed a softer look.
Plus I added a highlight to the base, which helps give a bit of extra volume to it.

Bed is done!
2. Drawing the Room
Now that weve
nished the bed, lets
gure out the dimensions of the room and get the walls and oor done.
Step 1
We start by making the back lines for the oor. Well de
ne width and length later on.

Step 2
We duplicate the oor lines and move them up to de
ne the bedrooms height.

Step 3
Then take the oor lines again, duplicate them and Rotate 180,
nd a location for these new lines that you like to
de
ne the width and length of the room, it could be many sizes or shapes but Ill make a small room to avoid using
canvas space frivolously and to keep a tight composition with mostly essential elements.

Step 4
Having all measures de
ne, lets
nish the shapes by removing the leftover bits and connecting the heights on their
corners.

Step 5
Pick a color for the walls. Im keeping most of my colors neutral because I like the look and because its less restricting
when we need to add colors for other elements, later on.
As usual, the darker shade faces right. On the valley corner (where both walls meet) we lower the contrast and use a
darker shade of the wall color.

Step 6
Adding oor color. Ill be making a wooden oor and I liked this shade, its di erent enough from the bed wood colors
and it also works well with it.
If you want the same color its 35, 60%, 80% (HSB) though in hindsight, it could be a little bit brighter and more
saturated.

Nevermind the oating characteractually lets hide that layer for a while.
Step 7
Well make a wood board texture for our oor. For the sake of brevity well only worry about covering this surface but if
you make this texture tileable it could be a very useful asset for whenever you make another interior scene.
Make a New Layer and draw a line parallel to either one of the walls. Then duplicate it and place it farther from the
wall, and repeat duplicating the group instead of the single line, to save e ort and easily maintain consistency until
you cover the whole surface.

Step 8
Then on another layer make lines perpendicular to the previous ones to make the edges of each oorboard. Repeat
along the length and width but leaving every other strip empty.
You may notice my oorboards start and end precisely matching the edges of the room this isnt mandatory and not
realistic either but I think its preferable and its easy for me to do because I give most of my lines distances divisible by
10 px. Which, also, is easy for me to do because I move most of my elements on the canvas by using the arrow keys
while holding down shift, which makes the elements move 10 px in the direction you want.

Step 9
Now duplicate those new lines and place them on the empty strips, but o set them so that the breaks happen at the
midpoint of the previous set of breaks. Simply put, the oorboards should tile the way bricks on a wall do.

Step 10
Now we give all those lines a darker shade of the wood oor color. Just around 4% darker, well give the texture very
low contrast so its not overpowering.

Step 11
Thats not a terrible wood oor texture but we can make it a little more natural looking by randomly having
oorboards with slightly di erent colors.
Well do three colors total and well start by coloring roughly a third of the boards with some high contrast color for
now. Try to not make areas stand out as too full or too empty of this new color squinting helps to spot these.

Step 12

Repeat the above with a new color.

Step 13
And then replace these two new colors with two lighter shades of the wood oor color.
Looking good!

Step 14
Lets add a simple, chunky baseboard to the walls. It makes a big di erence.
Start with a couple of lines parallel to the oor and give them the height you like.

Step 15
Then
ll with white (most common, and looks nice) or some wood shade.

Shade the darker side, the corners, the lines where baseboard and wall meet and add a soft highlight to the top.

And the interior walls and oor are now done. But we can go just slightly beyond the interior, to show the width of the
walls and oor, like cross section cuts.
Step 16
This is optional but if you ever make a cutaway graphic, you probably will end up having to show the inside of the walls.
Also, itll give the illustration a more
nished look.
So add lines parallel to the edges, all around.

Step 17
Choose a concrete kind of color, or whatever you like. Shade appropriately.

Step 18
Well make our peak highlights be on the interior, meaning right over the edges of the wall and wood colors. Drawn as
white (for now) on a New Layer.

Also, soften the black lines around this highlight, we dont need high contrast outlining there.

Step 19
Change the blending mode of the layer with the white highlight to Overlay and the opacity to or around 30%. This way
you can add brightness while also keeping a good measure of saturation.
Merge Down to the wall layer and youre done with the three main surfaces.

3. Adding Details to the Walls

The walls could conceivable be bare, as its possible theres a window and a door in the walls that were not seeing. But
for now that wont be the case.
Well add a door, well add a window and something more.
Step 1
Bring back your character to
nd a nice size for the edges of the door.

Step 2
Around the edges well add a few more lines thatll make the door frame. Make the door frame about as wide as the
baseboards.

Step 3
Well make the baseboards and door frame match seamlessly, so give the frame the same color, outlines, highlights,
everything. And paint over the seam.

Step 4
Well add a little bit of extra oor color/texture under the door so that it doesnt look so perfectly ush with the
wall/ oor.

Step 5
And then when we add the door, theres an added dimension to it.

I made the door the same color as the frame and softened the outlines around it.

Step 6
We should use the character to help place the doorknob; it should be at elbow height and so I drew a line behind the
character at around that height.

Step 7
Then we draw a simple, round doorknob.

Step 8
And then give the doorknob its color and shading. I went with grey/silver.

Step 9
Lets not leave the door so at and boring.
Well add four panels to it. Well start with the horizontal lines, which well draw in a New Layer in a contrasting,
temporary color. The lines should go (from top to bottom) undert the top, over and under the doorknob and over the
bottom.

Step 10
Then in another layer add four vertical lines, two by the edges and two in the middle. Simple.

Step 11
Merge the lines layers, delete whatever lines extend beyond the four squares and give the squares a very slightly
(about 5%) darker shade than the door.

Step 12
In a New Layer draw four new rectangles exactly 1 px below and 1 px to the right the previous ones. Well turn these
into highlights and thatll give the panel relief e ect to the door.

Step 13
Adjust the color of the new rectangles to just barely brighter than the door (again, about 5% brightness di erence) and
use the background door color wherever the light and dark shades overlap.

Step 14
Now that the door is done, we can use it to make our window because well keep the window with the same width, the
same frame design and the same height on the room.
So select the door try doing it with the Polygonal Lasso Tool (with Anti-alias o .) Then Copy it, Paste it and Flip it
(Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal) and place it where you like it on the opposite wall.

Step 15
Well take care of the colors shortly but for now lets draw the bottom of the window frame and remove the excess
door.

Step 16

Draw two rectangles to make a couple of separate window panes, with a rail in the middle.

Step 17
And then
ll with some sky-like or glass-like color.
You could also show whats behind the window but preferably if you already had an environment ready.

Step 18
Optionally, add a bit of an e ect to the glass.
I usually add a pair of parallel lines, one lighter and one darker because I think it either conveys were seeing through
the glass to the exterior parts of the window or that the interior parts of the window are re ecting on the glassand
any of those interpretations work
ne for me.

Step 19
Finally with the window design complete, update the colors to left-facing.

The Paint Bucket Tool, with Contiguous set to o is great for replacing all instances of a color. Just make sure that
you use it within limited selections and be aware of any possible unintended changes that happen when some shades
repeat.

Step 20
Lets add an extra detail to the walls as even with a window and a door, they look a little bare and sad.
So well do a poster.
Well start de
ning the dimensions for it and doing it with double lines to include a poster frame.

Step 21
Color and shade the frame.

Step 22
And now import the picture you want to turn into a samll pixel art poster.

I decided to use this picture but realized later on that it can be confused with a window viewwhich is a little
backwards since our actual window doesnt even have a view! but just use whatever artwork or photo that you like
and youll be able to adapt to isometric in a few steps.
First, lower its layer opacity so you can see the poster frame behind. Then, scale it (Edit > Free Transform) so that it
matches the dimensions of the poster frame (if the proportions are o you can either crop the picture or adjust the
poster frame) and then set vertical skew to either 26.5 or -26.5 depending on which wall youll use for your poster.
This turns horizontal lines into 2:1 lines.
Your picture is now adjusted to the right angle but unless you do some pixel-by-pixel work on it, it will always look like
a rescaled photo.

Step 23
So on a New Layer, trace over the picture, cutting smooth gradients down to a few colors.

Step 24
And slightly ordering or straightening irregular lines.

Step 25
Some of the detail can be abstrated into simple patterns.

Step 26

And pattern can also be applied to gradients for a smoother ow, plus an extra arti
cial (in a good way)
nish.
Once youve
nished the graphic, you can delete the reference picture layer and adjust the Brightness/Contrast
(Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast) or the Hue/Saturation/Lightness (Image > Adjustments >
Hue/Saturation) to something more vibrant.

Step 27
Finally, and also optionally, you can do a soft outline cast over the poster by the poster frame. Do it as a black rectangle
in a New Layer, adjust its Opacity and then Merge Down.

And with that, the walls are complete!

Verestapginaen: espaol

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4. Designing Extra Elements

Lots of progress made but theres still not much to do in that bedroom aside from sleeping. Lets add some extra
furniture plus some other elements to help in that regard as well as making the scene more detailed and the
composition more interesting.
Step 1
Well start with a desk/table.
Using the character to de
ne its height. If in doubt, just stand before a desk and see how high on your body the
surface reaches.
So we place a line for the bottom/shadow and one for the top surface.

Step 2
Then we de
ne a width for it.
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