Hi Pragz/Saraa, welcome to PixelJoint :D

It's a lovely tree you've brought. 6 colors is by no means excessive for this sort of thing, but your palette could still use a bit of work. You lack contrast, and the brightness is pretty high all over. These together lend a very washed out look. Also, it's a good idea to shift hue in addition to lightness--things in shadow generally appear to be a different color than in light in real life. Generally, you should shift towards blue in shadow and towards yellow in light, but these are very loose guidelines. Just go with what looks best. You are doing this with your lightest leaf color--it's much more yellow than the other leaf colors--but it's good do do it all over.

Here's a quick palette edit demonstrating these points:
->

I've put your original beside it for easy comparison. Also, you're underutilizing your darkest leaf color. You're using it almost exclusively for outlining, but you could create a lot more depth if you pulled it in and used for shading. See here:



It changes the style, the feel of the piece, which you may or may not want, but it's good to keep an eye out for colors that can be used more.

Also, the shape of the treetop seems a bit to regular to me, and perhaps too small for the trunk. It also might be nice to suggest more individual leaves--when you've just got "balls" of leaf clusters, you run the risk of having your tree just look like broccoli or something, ya know?

Anyway, nice work! Hope to see some updates.

Heh, we posted at the exact same time. I think most of what I said is still applicable, though your leaf colors are definitely improved. I'd like to see more yellow at the lighter end, though.

Is this any better?



I have no idea as to how to go about "suggesting" leaves. D;


Edited by Pragz - 09 August 2009 at 7:24pm

That backmost outline/shadow looks really out of place imo

A few more things, about your outlines: there are 2 squarish warts on the left side of the trunk. They would look better if you just removed the single corner pixels (or maybe 2 pixels on the top corners).
The ground line could also be more 'gnarlish': let's have more of the roots.

I agree that your darkest outline is weird at the moment. There is not only one solution there: it very much depends on what atmosphere you want to give, if you'll make a background or not (please do!), what it would be like (sky, more trees, other), and how you want the tree to interact with it (fade in or stand out).

I (again) suggest working on a simple background, it might help you see these issues better, as well as give you some fun.
If you can, use software supporting layers (photoshop, gimp): you will be able to experiment more easily with various combinations, positions, etc.

Your rendering now gives a feeling of light coming slightly from under, because each yellow patch casts a shadow a little above it. Could be sunset, could be firelight (oops, just notice Hatch said this!). The darkest outline emphasizes this, because it is also stronger above.

Maybe don't try to go into too much leaf detail right now: this is not so easy, and the result heavily depends on your good understanding of light, color, texture (all of which actually you seem to have a good first approach at!).

As Hatch said, there are lots of beautiful trees and forest scenes on PJ, use the search function if you haven't already.
(Edit: here's one with nice leaves, which don't look too difficult)

I'm sure you'll quickly improve, you have the positive attitude!


Edited by Manupix - 10 August 2009 at 12:09pm