Stray Thoughts on Isometric Workflow

I suppose the best way to do isometric reference figures 3D modeling, but that's a skill I don't have. I'm used to sculpting with clay though, so if I were to make an isometric game I'd probably end up with a workflow closer to that of DOOM. It still saves a lot of time when dealing with perspective, pose consistency and self+drop shadow. Shadows (light) for the figures might be better off as nearly top-down so they don't spill into other tiles much, complicating things. Shadows in general are a problem because single light source overlapping shadows shouldn't become twice as dark, but simply merge. This requires some sort of buffer, which is not a problem now unless you more or less scratchcode engines like me. Other solutions are using flat dither or flashing shadows, but those techniques were more viable on old CRTs.

2D engine shadow rendering in general is often faulty, as shadows are the absence of most light except perhaps some ambience. Making a lit scene/prop/ground darker by mixing in pure black often looks unconvincing. I experimented a while back with giving assets two layer, a base frame that was in dark ambience, then painted on light, which could be varied in intensity for character standing in shadows, or ground being in shadow. Perhaps this all doesn't really matter though. With 2D assets you already have to forego time-of-day shadow drops etc.

When drawing one can cheat a bit with the pose to improve readability. This figma figure has realistic proportions, but I think X-COMs 4.5 heads and trunky limbs will work better. The heads need to be identifiable to sponsor character bonding. It's one of the more important aspects of the game since you directly control and follow each character.

Perhaps true isometric (higher viewing angle) gives a better overview than game isometric (lower viewing angle). True isometric might be viable when not dealing with lowrez pixel art, but hand drawn 1080p+. This photo was taken quite far away to limit FoV distortion. I used a little angle prop to line up the camera. When trying to draw isometric assets by hand, it's easy to flatten the top part of the figure to eye-level perspective since we're so used to seeing things like feet at an angle but shoulders aligned horizontally.

The kneeling figure is a MicroSister Orga (part of the Microman series).