One of the first things I wanted to do for the game was to draw a ground tile upon which it would then be possible to build everything else.

My first concept was very simple. I used only a 2D plane that I painted over and then drew a couple of what would be an attempt at grass on top.

This honestly looked really bad and I decided to try drawing inspiration from other games. The first one, which is a huge influence overall, is Wakfu. The second one I took as a reference for the tiles is Hartacon.

Wakfu

Hartacon

I completely redid the tile. I included the ground below so that it would be possible to move the tile in the Z axis as well. I also chose a different approach when drawing the grass, and was now drawing individual strands instead making sure it overlaps the edges. In order for the player to be able to easily distinguish between individual tiles I made a black outline around the top of the tile. Finally, I made three color variants of the grass to give the environment a more natural feeling.