Palm Tree Help

[gaming ace]

Hey guys, so recently I've been working on tropical, beach tiles for my tileset and I'm working on some palm trees! I'm having a bit of trouble with them, so it'd figured someone out there could kindly lead me in the right direction from where I'm at so far. Right now I feel like the leaves kinda share the appearance of seaweed haha, any suggestions??


[Akselj]

The leaves should be thicker, and split. And the bottom is totally mis-shaped. Also, the leaves on palm trees are a darker green, and the trunk grey-ish. Though you shouldn't worry about colouring if you're not going for 100% authentic. After all, games almost never are.

Here's a real palm tree. Take a look at the trunk and the leaves.


[gaming ace]

Awesome, great points. Thanks a lot man. Im redoing the whole tree at the moment, I'll post it once I'm done!

[Harris6310]

Palm trees always lean to the left or right.

[gaming ace]

Okay I went ahead and redid the shape of the trunk and all the leaves, focusing more on the actually shape and texture of the leaves (thanks for the picture, it really helped!). Here's what I'm working with now. Better?


[Dark Crusade]

Why make it so straight? Make the palm tree bend a bit, then it will be easier to make gradual increases in the thickness of the trunk. It also needs depth, and overall it feels a bit confused as to the perspective. I assume it's front on, however the leaves don't compliment this, if your going to have leaves spreading in all directions like that, use depth, and possibly include some mid-level leaves.

[gaming ace]

Thanks a bunch for the help everyone. Taking into account what Kreator said, heres my latest edit. Yay or Nay?


[Dark Crusade]

Improving. The main issue now is that you have dodgy and chunky outlines, and lighter pixels outside the outline. Clean it up, and remove double pixels on the outline.

[gaming ace]

Mah bad, should've cleaned it up before posting. Here we go, any better?


[Joyce]

Fixed some dodgy lines that the trunk had.. they were awfull. :icon_crap:
I'd help fixing the dodgy leaves as well.. But I'm no pixel artist.

[Robin]

Now it looks like a twiglet. Use different colours in the outline to stop it looking so twiglet-y.

[balliztik1]

@Robin:

> Now it looks like a twiglet. Use different colours in the outline to stop it looking so twiglet-y.

I had a nice little Googlequest for "Twiglet". I learned something today. =D

Regarding the lines, it's not so much that they are jagged, since that will undoubtedly happen when dealing with curves, especially given that the style he's drawing in is not designed for anti-aliasing. The bigger issue is the physics of the thing. It looks like you've properly added curvature, but it's inverse of how it should be. Your curve is concave instead of convex. If you'll notice in Aksel's picture, the top of the tree leans slightly. In your image, the top is straighter, and the bottom is more curved. I think it'd not only give you a lot easier time making it look right if you switched them, but also give the feeling of a leaning palm tree, rather than an oddly curved one. Of course, palm trees are known to grow in freakish ways as a quick search will show, so whichever works best for you is fine.

Besides the lines, though, I think the palette could use a little reversal as well. Again using Aksel's image as a reference, you'll notice the dull grey bark and the vivid green leaves. Yours has dull colored leaves and fairly vivid bark. I'd say tone the colors a bit more grey on the trunk and a bit more saturated on the greens of the leaves.

[gaming ace]

Alright, here's what I have now. I added more saturation to the leaves and keeping in mind what Ballie was talking about, gave it a new shape. What do you think about the new curve?