Golden Sun isn't really a tile game, so I'm a big confused. Oh, and how do I make the grid?

I'm actually just going to do the house for now. Might do the character after but I'll need a different picture for that.

What do you mean Golden Sun isn't a tile game? I can see the tiles in that screenshot. And tiles are quite useful design-wise, 1 tile-width should match up with one walk cycle animation, and tiles also generally match up with collision-detection such as not allowing the player to walk where a wall is Golden sun is extremely similar graphically to ChronoTrigger:
Town Square Hilltop with Pterodactyls Many, many of the games for the SNES, SEGA16, and GBA use square-tile 2D graphics, they just look a bit different depending whether they are used in a 3/4 overhead view, true overhead view, isometric view, side-on platformer view (where they are combined with a 'painted' background), or 1/4 overhead arcade fighter view. Square tiles were what the console engines supported and an industry standard all game artists knew how to produce, and they are still used in modern 2D games because there are only 3 other ways you can do 2D graphics: you can use hexagonal tiles instead of square ones, you can use a painting-like background over an invisible pathfinding layer like many 2D adventure games, especially by Sierra, or since the invention of Flash it's been possible to use more object-oriented physics which assign collision and pathfinding properties to individual sprites - maybe PS 1 or 2 could also do this, not sure. (Also there are 2D/3D hybrid graphics, but I won't get into those.)

Anyway, it would be entirely possible to re-implement Golden Sun's graphics in a non-tile-based way, but the original game is definitely tile-based.

Here, now you can see the tiles I hope.

For example, look at the edge of the grass in the upper left hand corner below the house, then look at the edge of the grass below the sideways-facing person: clearly the same grass-at-the-top-of-a-cliff tile was used here. Also look at the tree, the leftmost ball of tree leaves is a duplicate of the one that is slightly higher and to the right. In the dark grass below the tree there is a pair of purple heart shapes that is duplicated. Etc.

I see it now. I never recognized it. Well, you can walk under the tree, so there must be a way to program it so that the leaves allow the player to be present. It would make the tree less blocky from the back too. Anyway, now I see the tiles, and it's very interesting.

also inkscape is great for the block work and gimp for the actual shading
i use it because its easier. Yeah getting things symetrical is easy in either copy and paste

Do you understand transparency and layers? The dirt and grass is on the bottom layer, the characters are on the layer above that, then the leaves are on the layer above the characters.

Yep, I understand. But like you said, tiles restrict the character's movement so there has to be something done here because nothing says the leaves layer allows character movement, so it must be a programming thing

Well yes, it is a programmer thing in the sense that all pathfinding and collision detection is. But generally layers above the character have no collision detection, that's mainly done on the same layer as the character, where the tree trunk would be, along with walls, rocks, cuttable grass, and pretty much all the interactable objects in the game. In the same way the background layer (sky and such) is below everything so there's no collision detection with that. The ground layer sort of has pathfinding instead of collision detection; that's what allows the character to walk up slopes or stairs, and fall in holes.

Ok, I understand.

benifits of vectors is that you get a custom bound mesh to calculate against