Ive always been fascinted by these small oriental trees, and decided to create my own take on them.
I was going for a semi-realistic style, but with obvious more toony influences. All Blender(nodes used for color), Photoshop for text etc.
Blender Internal, 14 minute render. I can post up wires or anything people want.
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Im open to all crits/votes/opinions.
Peace, and thanks everybody,
Drew
That’s pretty cool. I like the fact that the modeling is cartoony, but it is realistically shaded/lit. Are your textures all procedural?
Maybe a little less DOF on the tree in the foreground.
Something about that tree in the foreground, I can’t quite place it. The tree in focus is really nice though.
Bonsai, I thought they were. Unless this is a play on words. Anyway, nice job, I like the tree in foxus, (dof is a bit much too though, yeah)
@Blenditall: Thanks man. The textures are mostly image based, but they all have at least one procedural texture layer.
@CD: Yeah, I guess I always overdo it a bit 
@Blackboe: Yeah, tis a play on words. To sorta play off the toony aspect. Yeah, the dof is a bit strong, Ill rerender it I think…tomorrow 
cool free_ality!
really good stuff in there, especially the modelling and the textures
however there are a few things i think you should consider revising…
First off, you really overdid the DOF 
seriously, it’s waaaaay too much
also, those really bright green string things–its not too clear, at least to me, of what those are, especaially because of the really bright, unnatural color… vines perhaps?
lastly, those little piles of dirt at the bottom of the pot; imo, those piles are way out of place, they seem too squished up against the pot - which also shows how similar the textures are. i think, unless the pot itself is made of dirt, one of those two textures needs lots of changing
ok, those things aside, it really is a nice piece
Dof: Yeah, I got it 
The dirt is actually pretty different, the similarity was caused inadvertantly by some color curves work…oops.
The green things are vines. Again, so bright due to the color corrections.
Er… Don’t you mean Bonsai?
edit: Damn, BlackBoe beat me to it. Quite amazing how many posts simply had mushroomed before mine (blames laggy connection)
Pretty neat model nonetheless, personally though I’d lose the vine-things or change its colour. I can’t see how the tree in the foreground is helping the composition.
I know you like to go DOF happy on all of your images, but usually you don’t need a lot, just enough to attract more attention to the area of focus while not blurring the other objects to a blurry mess.
@Amade: Nah, play on words. And good crits… maybe a simpler composition woul dbe better…
@CD: Ha, thanks for the tip man.
Looks good, I like the pot texture.
You could actually do without the foreground tree entirely, IMO. It just feels like it’s in the way.
Yeah, Im kinda getting that feeling too
Added updated version to the first post…
Now your dirt looks a bit red. Granted dirt with a lot of Iron tends to be red but not quite like that.
True, reworked the colors again, removed original
ooh, lots better free_ality!
i still have one suggestion - maybe use render layers for your dirt cause it’s still not quite right.
anyway, looks loads better keep up the good work
the camera position makes it look weird …i mean like, the pot looks like its more stretched in the x axis then the y axis, at least that it what i am seeing.
Also, try rendering in indigo, better results, much better results.
But you get my 4 stars homie…lol
Much better
Huh, looks almost TOO empty now. Too… over balanced, or something, I dunno. Anyway, doesn’t really matter.
Maybe crop it a bit or add somesort of Japanese saying in kanji at the side? Or even a sort of watermark texture for the empty space, like ones you often get on those Chinese/Japanese art scrolls.
Ok, updated again.
Sorry for all these updates, I thought I was finished, poeple are making great comments…
Added 2D birds, and Japanese text:
“Banzai: A Few Hundred Years in the making”