yobeefjerky I'm good with my hands but suck totally with the mouse at CG.
Decals
That said there's nothing special about creating the decals. Most have hard edges which is simple pixelation like all sprite "art". Only the curvy ones have blurred edges. You can use MSPaint or Paint.Net like me. See drawing form.
Roof Textures
Well, these aren't really created by man but are BW version of photos. Just look for "greying" or "black & white" option of the programs. Simplest way is using irfanview/image/turn to greyscale and save. Note: it's not even an image editor.
Part stuff
- Floors, roofs, and walls I simply reused the vanilla ones or based new ones on them. It's a simple copy and paste operation.
new Part stuff
Drawing form outlines I use the simple line tool(s) in MSPaint or Paint.Net adjusted to be either sharp or antialiasing. Then fill the rest.
Walls, sometimes roof have shadows: Paint.net/Effects/Selection/Outline Selection or Feather Selection or Magic Wand + Effects/Blurs/Gaussian Blur.
For round things where color changes use gradient tools or lensflare (+greyscale). Depends. Or reuse the vanilla bullet and re-scale, copy and paste parts. I'm guessing pixel art programs have better option or ways doing it but I dunno.
Pixel art: just draw with imagination or fantasy. Imagine reflection, shadows and such gives them a naturalness. Use gauss blur or gradient for the colors. Same goes for patterns. The secret of patterns is repeating and re-combining. Also it's a good idea to keep tile size to multiple of 8.
Effects
A combination of all above, but using additionally changing colors, hues, brightness/contrast, transparency, invert etc. simply said anything with color manipulation. All within the Adjustment menu rather than the Effects menu (for same reason).
Anything else?
