Fountains are nice for decoration in a town. Let's try one!
First, you should have in mind what type of fountain you want. Some can get really ornate, others are like round pools with water shooting up in the middle.
The water animation can be done with charactersets, I would recommend that. For right now, let's focus on just the shape of the fountain. Simple and round, star shaped, triangle, multiple levelled, want it to be a sculpture? You have many options.
But since it's more or less an introductory lesson, let's leave the cool designs for another time. We'll do a simple round one and see if I have time to do another one.
I made a new file that's 48x64. So, 3 tiles wide, 4 tiles tall (Remember, each tile is 16x16, so you'll want to have multiples of 16). Usually I don't make the base of the fountain very big, I'll make it 2 tiles tall. You can certainly change it, but I wouldn't make it too tall as you'll want the characters to be able to at least see the water.
The circle tool will be useful here. Try not to make the circle too tall, as this circle is for the bottom and you'll need one for the top. My circle that I made was 48 pixels wide, and 20 pixels tall.
Copy that circle, and place it above. How high you place it will make the fountain seem taller or smaller. You can continue a process like this if you want to make the fountain have multiple layers, but we'll ignore that for now. I recommend making the space between the bottom and the top an even number, it's better for tiling purposes. 4 in particular is a good one.
Connecting the sides... We'll have to remove the parts that will not be seen. That's next.
Since we want water to be in this part, we'll get rid of the line that was there. Still ignoring the shading, that we'll do after we're done with the basic shape.
Use the circle tool, and draw a circle right in here. This is for the top part of the fountain, where some people sit on. You can make it wide or narrow. Don't worry too much about getting a perfect circle. You can copy one side and flip it over so it matches on both sides:
We have a few options now. We could make the fountain taller by adding another level in a similar way (But smaller), we could make the water completely still and place it directly on there, we could put the parts that will overlap the water into a characterset, or build the fountain into the ground, and make the circle in the middle transparent so you can put the water tiles underneath:
Let's do the last one that I said. So for now, all I did was place flat colors on the fountain. Each of them different so I don't get them mixed up. The water one and the ground one will later be transparent, but I'll deal with that once I get there.
I made myself a floor tile. You can check it out here, I made a zoomed in version to the right. I will go more into floor tiles and bricks another time. In the mean time, just try to divide the tile into equal sections. You can make 4 squares inside the 16x16 tile if you want to try out a floor tile for now.
I will place the fountain on top of this floor tile, because I figure that I will only use the fountain when it's on that floor tile, and it will make my life easier when it gets up to water. This step could be left until later if you don't feel like having the floor tile distract you.
I'll use a dark grey for the fountain, and change the outline color to a dark purple. I tend not to like black outlines, if you like it, keep it.
I was looking at a fountain picture on google. So I'll use lines going around the whole fountain. The floor tile is removed here because I wanted to do some mirroring (Copying the left side and flipping it over)
The lines on top are straightest in the middle, then they get more diagonal, then end up horizontal at the sides. Ignore the back, you don't really need them there, though you could follow the same thing for that.
I made the lines anyway:
I thought the dark purple was too strong, so I made it a lighter gray. This is the same gray that's used for the fountain base.
Remember what I said about color divisions? Yeah, we'll use white instead of the dark purple to make the distinction between the top and bottom.
Making the back of it darker... still using the same dark color as the base.
I used the dark purple in the outline and made some pattern at the very bottom of the base. The light gray on top I used as highlights for the top of the base. The middle part should be brightest, the sides should be least bright so it looks curved.
Now, to put a place where water will come out from.
Filling it in with a solid color. This pole is closer than the back of the fountain, but not as much as the front of the fountain. Also, it doesn't need too much shading because there will be water coming out of it.
I put a highlight in the center of the pole.
Now, to worry about the floor. Do what I told you before, put the floor tile down, then copy the fountain on top, making the green the transparent color.
So, make that blue center into the transparent color. You'll place this fountain on top of water, so you don't have to worry about animating that yourself. If any of the waters boundaries show up (Like say, grass), then place the water while pressing Shift.
Use charactersets to make the water animate. Try putting a few blue and white dots and spraying them around. You could also do a waterfall type thing instead. I won't help with this part because I'm out of time.
Here's an example map:
And here's our chipset:
These are all the colors I used for the fountain:
And the colors in the whole tileset (Some are still from those boxes that the template chipset came with)
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Tileset tutorial
