Good stuff for week 1 @spikeyxxx! I definitely see where you’re coming from with fewer grass blades where the ground color does most of the work. In a way the grass blades are primarily for breaking up the silhouette. Definitely a valid interpretation.
While I see how you got here, I still get a distinct “fluffy / plush / full” grass feeling from the art. Whereas with your 3D application it feels more like a bare ground with sparse grass. As if it’s having a hard time growing.
Whether you go with more grass blades or fewer, I think the stylized look is dependent on a shadeless material like I used in the forest course. Seeing lighting and shadows per grass blade is inherently more realistic and bad for stylization in my experience. I would start by adding a shadeless (emission or maybe shader to RGB) material that inherits the ground texture.
A bonus of fewer grass blades is being optimized for scene performance, of course. For week 2 I’d like to see you tackle a larger area, like a field-size test.
