I recently reworked this one. The vectors are actually done from screencaps of the show. The characters on the right are from the show break first 12 episodes, the cap on the left is from episode 23, near the end. Both were vectored on transparent layers using the Gimp, and color, shadows and highlights were added in photoshop. (I just like the gimp better for vectoring, what can I say).

The background was down using brushwork, some brushes found on DevianART, some were just brushes on photoshop. I tried to recreate the background style from the show without directly copying, using the same color palette.

Oh how cute... Some of your Sakura petals have a weird glow around them for some reason. Why does it glow if this is a realistic sort of feel? The BG isn't giving a sense of depth because the perception of some of the stuff aren't different from some stuff in the foreground/middle. If the focus is on the characters in front, the BG is slightly blurry because they're not the focus right? (Think camera zooms.) Your petals on the floor are much too clear with their overpowering shadows that are darker than the shadows of the petals in front (which by the way are too noticeable. Should be blurred more and lighter. They're not giant so their shadows shouldn't be that clear even on a sunny day.)

So the BG should be blurrier than the front, not so much details, and work on your sky. The clouds reach the ground... They shouldn't have to. They're not over a hill that reaches the sky are they? ^^;

To make more of a powerful effect, you can even blur the character on the left a bit to make it look like she's really behind the one on the right. (Damn it I forgot their names...)

Good luck. ^^

·I suggest make all trees sakura trees...

·Did you apply Drop Shadow to her eyelashes ? looks a little bit wried to me...

You did a great job vectoring it
the only thing you have to fix is the background
good luck

I really like it but you should had made all the trees the same instead of two diffrent kinds other thatn that I like it!

Great suggestions! I'd actually forgotten to skew the sky layer, it was practically flat. I'd used a temporary cloud pattern I generated using an old tutorial, but forgot to distort the perspective.

About making all the trees Cherry trees... I tried that and the petals seemed to disappear in the background. That was no good because I'd worked so hard on getting the swirling appearance, so someone suggested I use green in the background to make the petals stand out. As to the glow of some of the petals, I've adjusted that about a billion times it seems... I'm at a point where I say, "they are what they are" and not worry about it anymore.

I added a bit of blurring to the background to of varying degrees. I blurred Hatoko (the girl on the right), but now I'm wondering if, when I submit this, they'll ask "why is the scan on the left not the same quality as the scan on the right?" Sometimes you just can't win, although I do like the look of that now.

So I'm calling it "catching the dream is half the fun". That's what came out of it, because it seems like Misaki is trying to catch that one petal in front of her.

Something about it disturbs me and i cant put my finger on it... either way its a good start...

Z3R0

something about it disturbs me and i cant put my finger on it... either way its a good start...

Well, when you have an idea what about it disturbs you, just let me know.

Id say the second version looks more anime-like:)
the sky in the first one was too real-like!
I can say i like it like this...
Good luck with it:)

The second version is very nice...the leaves are a bit too bright in my opinion...and I don't like the grass: that's too plain in my opinion...here's a good tutorial for the grass http://ningen.nattoli.net/tutorials/grass ...good job! ^^

fragola89

The second version is very nice...the leaves are a bit too bright in my opinion...and I don't like the grass: that's too plain in my opinion...here's a good tutorial for the grass http://ningen.nattoli.net/tutorials/grass ...good job! ^^

Hadn't thought about grass. I tried it, but I'm not so sure I like it. Maybe I need to use different colors for it, but I also wanted it to be subtle.