Hi everybody 
I’m trying to do a Top down game in a toon style , but I can’t see if I need to improve the graphics of my ground.
It’s just a colored plane , but for a toon game, I don’t know if it’s “ok”
I’m not good at graphics and I can’t realize if my simple ground is “enought” , or if I need to improve it and how 
Here a Screenshot :
(I re-post actual image because old screenshot was invalid)
If someone have some advice about it I’ll really appreciate 
!
Have a good day !
Look at the shadows on trees and bushes. Do a similar effect on the grass all around, a few larger splotches of lighter and darker grass areas.
You could paint a mask around borders, like next to the river, maybe if you have some hills or large rocks or any sort of feature you can mask a border around it. Then use a noise pattern to break up the edge of those mask so it looks natural. You can have a complimentary color there like a brown in similar pallete.
Could also do some criss-cross trails this way too, or little streams. People like little streams. Jump over them. It’s just cute, especially when you are a fat little cat jumping over streams.
Some little obstacles that are easy to add could be just turning some trees over on their side, as if they’ve fallen over. Then if player has to walk around them time to time, it adds a tiny little interest.
I think moving details like your dragon fly will be biggest bang for buck. You could make a really nice and detailed ground texture but still within 10 seconds it is just seeing the same thing over and over again. So it is probably better to stay simple with it. Try to breath life into game by taking some time to add in hand created little environment stories here and there.
First of all, your game looks amazing.
Now, in order to improve the ground you need to make more variation. I will use some noise texture to make zones lighter or darker (Since is a toon game you dont have to do transitions, just make that when the noise value is higher than X change the color a bit) this will add some smooth variation to the ground.
You can also use this for color, so in some places is grass and in others is dirt
Sorry for the response time, I work on it on my free time ^^
Hi @carking1996
Great idea! I added splashes of color lighter and darker and it’s definitively do the tricks! Thanks for your help!
Here a screenshot:
(I re-post actual image because old screenshot was invalid)
@BIGTIMEMASTER Hello !
I begin to add a light mask border around rocks and tree with the same color of the darker grass. It’s smoothing the border of object and I very like it! I Will add some variation with dirt color for bigger object !
I Will add also some obstacle !
I think the same about how to try to breath life in game , I love to see little details like bugs, or specific animals action. I need to find what can be the little things that can do the tricks here to improve my scene. I Have some particle effect for the rain, fallen leaf. Maybe add some birds shadow , or clouds idk right now … i will keep thinking about it !
Thanks for helping me!
Hello @r31o !
Thanks for the compliment!
Use noise texture is effectively a very good idea! But I think will use ( as I did above on the screenshot with the lighter/darker spot) custom 3D plane to add other area like dirt .
I’m so bad about texturing x) …
Thanks for helping me !
Have a good day!
Since its a top down cartoony game, and the camera might not change position, here’s an idea. Paint some green specks on the green ground plane texture, to fake the effect of grass, and paint a few simple leaves on certain areas of the plane, to fake the effect that some leaves are on the ground too. Doing that might give more life to your ground.
I would pull down the camera angle a bit more.
And try to seperate interactable/collission elements of the stage with non-interactables.
Like the trees have colliders, so it is fine in 3d, but grass can be a cardboard grass for distinction.
Right now it doesn’t look like grass, and looks like spikes!
I would do it with no shadow, but billboard strictly Z rotation.
You can add vertex sway for more eye candy.
