This was the initial structure that I had from yesterday’s rough test, however after looking at examples of real and drawn cherry trees I felt that it could do with some improvement. For a start, this sort of tree tends to have a lot more branches- the lack of leaves really emphasises its branches more than other trees. I painted this new design based on additions to the old one:

Before, I’d represented the tree’s blossoms as blocks of colour, but realised this wasn’t really appropriate based on the nature of the tree. The blossoms create very different shapes to leaves, and I wanted to get the texture of the tree right.

To get this right in the digital version, I took the 16×16 pixel Sakura Blossom sprite and reduced the size by half, which ultimately distorts to shape and makes it seem more abstract while keeping a lot of the colours intact. I then copied and pasted it into the design, to create a repeating pattern which looked a lot more natural and detailed than the look I was going for before.

This tree is made up of three layers: a top layer containing blossoms, a middle layer with the tree trunk and a bottom layer which contains a darkened set of blossoms to create depth within the tree.

I repeated this process with a new tree design, which I sketched out but didn’t get round to painting unfortunately. The idea is to have two contrasting designs so I can hopefully repeat these two throughout the level design without having to draw any more VERY time-consuming trees…

Some screenshots from the level:

They’re surprisingly flexible! However, not much good on their own. I’ve had to adapt the design for the Bonsai style tree to match this one, or it looked seriously out of place. I used a similar method, however I converted the colours to the Sakura Blossom sprite to look more like a leaf than a flower. Here’s the result:

My main objection to the design is that everything is currently still very murky, despite the odd light here and there. I’m thinking of increasing the span of some of the outside lights to make everything a little brighter, however for now I’ve seen a great opportunity to hang lanterns from my trees. Everything so far is still in test phases, and this is no exception! This test has resulted in light overkill, which I’ll sort out if I decide to keep this in.