How to draw maps 2d, the easier and more efficient way

[GazingUp]

Simple question, what’s the easiest and efficient (along with quality) way to draw out whole maps like these:

Top two being hyper light drifter and bottom two being hollow knight (made with unity)

I love the lighting and shading that goes along with those drawings. Which I assume is pixel art for both cases.

I’d love to create worlds with both these games approach, hollow knight’s style of art along with hyper light drifter’s colors and lightings. Notice those red lights in HDL’s 2nd picture. That’s definitely some kind of lighting effect from a software like photoshop.

But what’s the efficient way of doing this?

I tried this image up here by creating tiles with graphicsgale, then made this little room on tiled, exported a png file to GIMP and added a gradient coloring to see if I can achieve a similar effect of the lighting. But this seems very inefficient. You can see I tried doing “selects” here and there and applied the gradient tool. You can see a distinction in the colors because of this. What’s the best way of doing this? Or even an easier way?

Please do let me know.

[system]

It may not be easier or more efficient but you should consider custom shaders for more flexability

Shaders 101 - Intro to Shaders

Shaders 102 - Basics of Image Effects

[GazingUp]

It may not be easier or more efficient but you should consider custom shaders for more flexability

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-HXmQAMhG0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpBnIAPtsj8

What about drawing the maps out?

Are they done by hand in one go? Or tiled each sprite in?

If you look at hyper light drifter and hollow knight, it doesn’t really look tiled. Look at the lighting, and shapes of certain objects on the map. Is it drawn together? If so, how would one go about this? Create a huge image file on an image editor and just draw it all in?

[system]

There’s no easy answer, I’m not sure exactly what techniques we’re used to render the levels in those games. You would probably want to start by making all the components of the level separately and layer them together, you could then add lighting effects afterward. Making a game that looks good stylistically takes work and there’s no single technique that every developer uses. When it comes down to it you have to figure out what works best for you with the tools you have.

[GazingUp]

There’s no easy answer, I’m not sure exactly what techniques we’re used to render the levels in those games. You would probably want to start by making all the components of the level separately and layer them together, you could then add lighting effects afterward. Making a game that looks good stylistically takes work and there’s no single technique that every developer uses. When it comes down to it you have to figure out what works best for you with the tools you have.

Okay. Thank you.