Board game tiles (Design question)

[Sprony]

I like to play board games such as Heroquest and Warhammer Quest with my friends (the nerd is strong in me). Good custom tiles are hard to find. The tiles I like all look hand drawn. I fully realize this probably a very dumb question but 'm wondering how these are made? What programs or techniques would be used? Photoshop and a Wacom tablet? Drawn by hand and colored on the computer? I'm a noob regarding digital art and would really like to know more.

 

Some Illustrations:

 

 

 

[Beck]

I'm honestly in no way shape or form a 2D artist.

 

But if I was approaching this, yes, I would use Photoshop and a tablet.

 

There are loads of tutorials online which should help you out with this kind of thing but one that springs to mind is in the Vertex e-book (Found here, it's free: http://www.artbypapercut.com/downloads/)

 

Go to page 47 in that e-book and there's a short tutorial about how this guy goes about painting his own textures. It's in a very similar style to the stuff posted above.

 

Also, try this link (it was posted in FMPONE's thread over in the 3D forum) which has a load of texturing tutorials by the looks of it: http://wiki.polycount.com/TexturingTutorials

 

Interested to see what comes of this since I like the style too

[Minos]

The first ones seem pretty easy actually, they are just photo manipulations with basic photoshop tools (drop shadows, burn, dodge etc). The snow ones seem to be painted with traditional media but I could be wrong.

 

I guess a good start would be to look for texturing tutorials for old skool engines (Half-Life, Quake 3, Unreal etc) or maybe take a look at some old books:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Dark-Side-Game-Texturing/dp/1592003508/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1381251144&sr=8-2&keywords=game+texturing

 

Hourences wrote some nice old school tutorials too:

http://www.hourences.com/tutorials/

 

The process is the same really, it's just the media that's different

[KoKo5oVaR]

Those looks indeed simply made in photoshop with photomanipulation or drawn

 

If you don't feel confident with painting, you could totally model that in max, bake a lighting, get a shot from top view and then polishing the painting/textures in photoshop

 

What i don't know though, is how you could print that easily at home on hard cardboard

[Minos]

Those looks indeed simply made in photoshop with photomanipulation or drawn

 

If you don't feel confident with painting, you could totally model that in max, bake a lighting, get a shot from top view and then polishing the painting/textures in photoshop

 

What i don't know though, is how you could print that easily at home on hard cardboard

 

Just print on regular paper and then glue to a cardboard

[Beck]

3D print that stuff. It'd look awesome

[KoKo5oVaR]

3D print that stuff. It'd look awesome

 

Yes please, then do this https://plus.google.com/photos/101414041980420991258/albums/5159117003619367633?banner=pwa and send it to us, i would be very grateful

[Beck]

I don't actually like board/tabletop games but I would actually love to 3D print tiles, vehicles, people and buildings for such a use. I think it'd be awesome fun

[Sprony]

Excellent suggestions guys! I didn't expect so much replies. I'm going to look into this. More ideas are always welcome.