I think you're looking at them too much as abstractions in space and shading them by learned manner and not observation. consider that in reality, most light on matte surfaces is not observed by direct reflection (where planes oriented towards the sun are bright, those away dark, and any curves a smooth direct transition between these), but rather shows the light that falls across the surface first. Think of the moon - it's not a gradient. There is a broad lighted area, a broad dark area, and then a transitional space which varies in size (due to irregular surfaces, dirtiness, reflected light).
Point taken. I've collected a
few reference material on flickr, as well. I hope they'll help coming with something better. I have googled for the "magical bean" of "Zelda : Minish Cap", as well, but i couldn't find it, unfortunately.
Seems that you need more than 1 sprite for those floating bushes. They get rather repetitive.
#true. That will be a real challenge for me to repeat this performance, but you're not taught unless you're challenged, ain't you ?
I used your thread as part of an inspiration piece in order to help me get better. This part of this particular thread shows eventually what I did with my trees.
* PypeBros feels honoured.
your trunk texture could be worked on a little bit. I don't know if you intend to continue that twisted trunk look all the way up the tree, but maybe you should. It'd look much better with that.
Somehow it's not tiling the way i'd like it to. I need to ensure i can easier spot those texture inconsistences when editing a level.
As for the twisting, my real-world observations here shown that trees are usually less and less showing the twisting as you move up (the "pipes" they're made of more and more merge so that twisting can no longer be noticed), while scarves due to broken branches and cracks in the "skin" of the tree became the things you notice the most.
PS: I haven't translated what I identified from my
latest pixel art reference materials into my own "little woods", but I finally "de-draft" it for the reference. Most the comments i made about it isn't translated in english (yet), though.