How can I make good trees?

[Raven]

Does anybody know how to make good looking trees?  These are some of my latest efforts:



They are adequate, I suppose, but I don't really like them.  To me, they just look like what they are: brown bits and green bits stuck together.

I thought of digging out all manuals which include trees, and following Playmobil's own instructions.  But I really want trees of all shapes and sizes to create a sort of dense woodland effect.  Something like this:



... but looking much more like woodland, and much less like a load of green bits stuck on top of brown bits.

Any advice?

[tahra]

Well, if you find out... share!

My current efforts are somewhat... lacking.

[leefert]

Trial and error... I keep making errors!

[tahra]

Trial and error... I keep making errors!

I got the error part down pat! 

[leefert]

You're not alone

[Salamander]

Disclaimer: I don't do a lot with trees myself, so this comes more from just looking at the pictures rather than a lot of experience.

Can you double the amount of greenery per tree? So if a tree comes with three green bits, use five or six to make it fuller. I know the green bits will often come with three holes for the branches to go in to stay on, but they'll usually hold just fine if only two, or sometimes even one, are used.

[Klickteryx]

... but looking much more like woodland, and much less like a load of green bits stuck on top of brown bits.

Any advice?

I like that composition. The thing that seems to be lacking with those trees is leaves. There is a lot of wood for the amount of leaves so I'd add more leaves to each tree if they were available.
One thing which doesn't require extra pieces is to arrange your woodland so that as many of the leaf pieces are facing outwards as possible. Have the tall tree in the middle then arrange the shorter ones around it trying to face the leaves outwards as much as possible. You want your woodland to be like a shell with very little inside and as much as possible on the outside.

[Raven]

More leaves - good idea, I'll try that.  I seem to have amassed rather a lot of trees, and therefore leaves also, so I'm able to add more.

I happened to look at this vet set photo this morning:

http://playmodb.org/setpics/4/4343.jpg

And I noticed that the tree on there looks so much better than mine, just because of the addition of leaves in the centre of the tree.

[bonniebeth]

I don't know if looking at playmobil's suggestions would help... they would have you put two different colors of leaf pieces on the same tree, which just looks silly to me. I think your individual trees look pretty good, actually. The taller light green one is the best.

As for creating a realistic forest, I struggle with that. But I remember one person here did an interesting, though complicated process one time with a great result. She lined up the trees she had, took a picture, and printed it out life-size. Then she set it up as a backdrop, arranged the trees differently in front of it, and took another picture, repeating the process until she had a multi-layered backdrop that looked really good behind the few actual trees she had. It was pretty cool.

[Birdie]

It's difficult, alright...
For my magical forest, I tried to add lower trees and bushes, of varied length, so that the end result looked fuller and more 'green' was showing. A pine tree here and there helps with that too, but then you'd have to mix tree types.





I agree with the rest that adding as many leaf-parts as possible helps. Of course the trees are less stable and tend to fall over a lot if the leaf-bits are only attached with one hole rather than three. What can you do?