heh, you got what I said about the brigtness completly wrong, I think you should change the buildings to be as saturated as the rest of the stuff, so that the building are as bright and colorful as the rest.
I actually gave an idea of how to make the cielings be as colorful as the rest of the tileset, please re-read that again.
and about the trees.....I'm kind of used to the logical occidental idea of progression from left to right, but I guess you read a lot of mangas or something :p
about the trees being flat because you're imitating the original, I think that's a poor decision, I really love the way the trees look, and they do look a lot like the originals, but as I said they do not work for topdown, although they'd be marvellous for sidescrollers.
I made a google hunt for Animal Crossing screenshots just to make this point, GC and DS versions can afford to use a style where it's not very clear what's the top and what isnt, because although in a screenshot of either the trees may look painted on, they are both 3d, so with every player movement the perspective is redefined, just that fixes the problem and makes them clearly 3d.
also there's the shrinking of the bg that perspective provides, and the fact things darken as they move away, point in case
http://dsmedia.ign.com/ds/image/article/562/562473/animal-crossing-ds-20041101033926508.jpgThe DS or GC version is not at all defined by what a screenshot looks like
your version is precisely defined by any screenshot(mockshot in this case) made of it, so you simply cant afford to have the trees look painted on at any moment.