Some background help

[BerserkerTails]

Okay, so I've luckily got another bout of inspiration to work on my game, and have returned to it. Thing is, some of the backgrounds look pretty, well, bad. I've been trying to update them to look slightly better, while still retaining their simplistic style, but I've been having a lot of trouble. Especially with this background:



For style comparison, here's one of the completed backgrounds that I'm proud of:



Now for the outside of the school (Which will only be seen in cutscenes), I know I need to do something with the grass and tree. The flag will be animated (And probably redrawn too), and I need to make the sky les... Plain. Any help with any of these would be appreciated, as I'm completely stuck now.

[Babar]

The bushes seem kind of weird being in the EXACT same line as the buiding. Also, perhaps it is just your style, but a darker outline would probably look better for the building

[Haddas]

Oops! I seem to have gone and edited THE WRONG PICTURE... Well that's not gonna stop me. I didn't spend a good 20 minutes for nothing!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

I'll be the first one to admit that I'm not particularly good with backgrounds, but I gave it a go anyway.

1. added a somewhat overcast gradient to the sky
2. removed light outlines on building
3.  Adjusted right side of building which looked wrong
4.  Adjusted shadows.  The building shadow only comes out a little way, but the tree (a much shorter source) stretches across the yard.  I adjusted it so the light source is more overhead
5.  Shaded the tree and grass on the left by hand.  Not sure if you'll like it but I think it looks okay.
6.  Fixed flagpole.  It was tilting opposite the angle of the rest of the image

You'll probably want a more blue gradient for the sky if it's bright out or whatnot, but the image looked somewhat overcast to me.