So, there's the character you play as, but then there's the platforms and the background of the game.

When you do art for these, how do you do it? Do you draw them as individual tiles so they can be put together? If so, what size would each tile usually be?

Or, do you draw the whole zone out as one image?

I'm guessing it's probably a mix of both, but again I'm curious about the standard size. I guess it's different depending on the game, but I'd just like to hear what people have to say.

Edited by Oriena - 03 July 2013 at 9:15pm

If you use a generic painting program, you'd better choose one that :
1) can display a tile-sized grid
2) can snap-to-grid, so that you can easily draw mockups from your in-progress tileset by copy-pasting single tiles.
Basically, see if your painting program has any "Grid" settings.

Some programs allow editing tiles at the same time as map, most notably the freeware Pixothello. If this interests you, see also the more recent Pyxel Edit.