Designing Wooden Platform

Inkscape Tutorial

We put the ideas of the wood material tutorial into action by designing wooden platforms. These are often used and very versatile game art assets. Wether it’s building levels for you platformer or creating elements for the background, wood just looks nice. With a few easy steps you can quickly create great looking assets.

2dgameartguru - designing wooden platforms

A lot of this tutorial is repeated here in a slightly less detailed way – you might want to reread the older tutorials if you run into problems.

Note:
If you work with bitmap output in mind I would suggest creating the platform as a bitmap first. This way you have the proper dimensions to work with. Import the bitmap and create the starting rectangle to match.

2Dgameartguru - spacer
2Dgameartguru inkscape toolbar

Let’s start creating wooden platforms

2Dgameartguru - spacer
2dgameartguru - designing wooden platforms

Let’s start with a rectangle.

Colour it in a shade of brown that stands out well from the background of your game.

Move the nodes to make the sides uneven. This gives it a less ‘perfect’ and more worn and organic feel.

Draw an uneven line to start on the wood texture.
Add some nodes if need to create an organic look.

Duplicate the line and move the nodes in those copies to create slight variations.

2dgameartguru - designing wooden platforms
2dgameartguru - designing wooden platforms

Convert the lines to paths (Path/ Stroke to Path) – if you want additional work and a more natural look.

Variate the line thickness by moving some of the nodes.

Add a rectangle for the hightlight and colour it along with the wood grain in a lighter shade of brown.

Change the transparency setting of the highlight colour to get a matching shade.

Duplicate the base shape to set a clip for the highlight and the wood grain (Object/ Clip/ Set).

Adding two circles for decoration with lighter transparent copies below and behind them.

2dgameartguru - designing wooden platforms
2Dgameartguru - spacer
2Dgameartguru inkscape toolbar

Create variations

2Dgameartguru - spacer
2dgameartguru - designing wooden platforms

Using the base shape it’s fairly easy to create variations.

Scale the width and modify the nodes at the ends to keep the.

Alter the colours – in this lighter version the grain colour is darker than the base.

Add a line between the two deco holes and curve it a little.

For more decoration add a circle.

Convert the circle to a path and add additional nodes to form an indentation.

2dgameartguru - designing wooden platforms
2dgameartguru - designing wooden platforms

Convert the ‘rope line’ to a path (Path/ Stroke to Path) and add a gradient fill to it.

Add some circles for highlights and you got the second platform looking distincly different from the first.

Rotate the base platform 90 degrees to create a vertical element.

Adjust the highlight for the shape as well as for the hole to match the top down lighting used for the base.

Convert the lines to shapes and add the rope colour gradient as well as some highlights.

2dgameartguru - designing wooden platforms
2Dgameartguru - spacer
One platform for everything might work – but adding variations greatly enriches the look and feel of your game. Wether you add detail, change the colour or put in some wear and tear, different looking elements will make the scene look so much more interesting.
Finally, I hope this tutorial on ‘designing wooden platforms’ was helpful. Hopefully it allowed you to create some game assets of your own.
2Dgameartguru - spacer
Get the source art (svg, pdf, affinity & cdr file) of this tutorial for free!