Constructive Criticsm

I am not a *ahem* artistically gifted person, nor do I have the experience of a lot of people here, but I will give you my criticism based as the end user. The water looks very nice, and I really like it. However couple of things that I don't like: the hills don't have nearly the detail of the water and look out of placed with it, also the water doesn't have a very good edge with the hills...it just hits the sides of them. In real life at the edge of water there is always some border: sand, vegetation, mud, rocks, cliff face, etc. Maybe if you put some vegetation on the hills and got it denser near the water edge and had it sort of over lap the water. or make the hills rocky like the ones in the Scottish Highlands.

And I think a windowblind with that color scheme would look nice, but the colors have been used in a lot of other skins...probably because they, look nice together.

I think thats the whole idea Travis,he wants it to look sorta artistic rather than realistic.A WB along those lines would be fine.

I think it's very pleasant. A nice change from the almost-real looking Bryce and Terragen landscapes.

I like it, but if You consider to upload it there should be a variation without the text and windows logo.

I guess you guys are right he wants it to be artistic and not realistic. In my opinion you wouldn't use a 3d program to make artisic landscapes, but you could. Make the hills no longer resemble normal hills...like make them glass or metal...I know its been done before...I still think that a windowblind skin around that theme would look nice

Yeah, the idea was to make it really more artistic, but I think travis is right, the water is still fairly detailed while the hills are not, that can easily be fixed though..

Also, perhaps going even further and making the hills look cell-shaded or something similar?

/me agrees with c242, drop the text and windows logo.