So I tried my hands at a willow again and this is the result:
The reason I'm still doing this, even though Seuss has already posted a beautiful willow, is that I'm trying to closely mimic Solifuge's style. I was afraid Seuss' willow wouldn't fit the general style of Stonesense, and thus I made this. This is a little mockup that shows how it would look like ingame. Please note I put my birch there, too
I'm willing to draw other trees, so please let me know whether you like it or not. Seuss, I'm not trying to step on your toes, and I love your plants! It's just that I like drawing stuff for Stonesense.
Vibrant colours like this?
First off my tree doesn't relay obey the rules of the tiles and shouldn't be used as such. It was more a practise sprite to test my abilities. Its also not the kind of willow tree you guys are probably used too.
I personally think your second sprite was better, that new vibrant green one is just too sickening and if you try to constrain your trees to what trees are already in the game you will end up will a bunch of sickly blobs. What you need to do is take that older sprite and add yellow to the highlights and deep aqua to the shadows. Generally a good way to pick a pallet is to find a mid tone that is the colour of you object then you highlight will be that colour with a bunch of yellow in it and more pale. Your shadow's should be your mid tone with a more rich blue in it and obviously darker. 2 reasons we use more yellow/warmer colours for highlights is because warmer colours pop out more and most light is yellow (sun, fire, electric lights) If however your light source wasn't a warm colour then you would use that colour to mix with your mid tone but if in doubt use yellow. Shadows are kinda similar but your only doing it because cool colours reseed. This can be used as much or little as you like it comes down to style.
If I seem hard on you its because your so close and if you can get this right you will start to amaze yourself.
I might make a tutorial/example later if people need it. Added solid-color boarders to Seuss' fantastic crop sprites, and a mockup comparison to show why:
You lose a lot of distinction in small-scale work, unless you add boarders, especially when a foreground sprite matches the color of the surface that it's on.
Personally I'm not a big fan of dark borders on environmental things, I feel it detaches its from the ground. Things with higher importance should have darker borders and I just don't value the shrubs to be that important. However if the vast majority want it I'll have to comply.
Stop using that tree.
done some work on a carpenters shop
I'm digging that that workshop.
Just the above mentioned floating saw. As far as flooring goes I recommend uploading it without and when/if we make a decision about workshop boundaries its an easy fix. However I understand if you want to know that decision sooner than later.