Thanks for the feedback guys, this is the kind of stuff I am looking for
I'll work towards consolidating the lighting direction on all of the assets and I'll do more work to make the tree a little more interesting in terms of silhouette and trunk shading.
That first offset lighting tree reference is perfect for me Decroded and what you said about the leaf rendering is true; I was searching for a lot of actual pixel art reference and a lot of them do render the leaves individually rather than using noise/dithering, I'll see if I can find a compromise that is consistent with the approach I took to make everything else.
You guys have been very helpful to this newcomer, I'll be sure to post updates when I feel I have made a reasonable amount of progress with these pieces.
Cheers,
Cory.