Below you can see how the game looked before I started working on it. The game looked good but there were issues with the lighting in particular. The shadows were harsh, the light was somewhat blown out and it was too even. I've learned that you really need to treat light like a physical object. It bounces around and is affected in various ways by the atmosphere. Also, the rocks were too polygonal looking and the foliage needed to look softer and more lush.
Below you can see some of the work I did to help push the overall look in the right direction. We got a much softer look in the foliage, the lighting isn't as harsh and the various rocks are much more convincing and not so polygonal.
And here are some of the props I created to help push the visual bar higher. These were also used as examples for our outsourcing team so they could better understand the overall style and quality we were looking for.
And finally here is a before and after screenshot of one of the many paintovers I did for our environments.
Before:
After:
