Reusable trees are good but…

OK… I know I’m hell bent on streamlining on optimizing my workflow in creating BG’s and reusable trees is an integral part of it but you see…. after using and abusing the same tree template for 5 years in so many backgrounds and graphics… I too get sick and tired of looking at them…I need to try and do something fresh…

I know, I’ll try and draw trees manually… easy right?… Err… not quite…

I’ve been using and abusing the same set of template trees for so long that I haven’t drawn any trees manually and I’m beginning to wonder… do I still have what it takes to draw a tree… manually?… No use procrastinating and better get to work…

An hour later (which is a long time) I managed to make this in Photoshop 7… Hmm… Seems passable, not to mention I can manually change the colors and hue of either the leaves or the trunks since they are layered and independent to each other unlike the previous template which is nothing but tree images photoshopped to hell and back to make it look like hand drawn… maybe I should draw more trees manually… what do you think?…

Anyway, in case you wanted to use the Tree Template for whatever project you are doing, you can grab it HERE…

So what makes a good BG Scenery good looking… let’s find out…

So the question is…

So what makes a good BG Scenery good looking?

I decided to do a quick test to see and find the answer to this elusive question. I choose Clannad Anime since it is very relevant to my favorite medium and that is Visual Novels. I usually watch Anime from Youtube but for this test we needed higher resolution so I uh… got it from somewhere on the internets.

After watching it… I took screenshots of scenes that gets my attention… you know scenes that makes you want to go to that particular location or something. That beautiful place. That is very pleasing to the eye… you know what I mean…

After careful analysis, I noticed that nearly all of them have “something” in common…