How can I make something simple look not so simple? Thread

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but here it goes.

Does anyone have any tips or perhaps some visual tips on how can I make this following picture look more detailed, give it more of a 3d feel, give it more depth, but at the same time keeping it simple and keeping it 2d. Also I don't want it to look like the generic wooden background ones (talking about ball labyrinths).

Maybe give it a theme?

You could, for instance, choose a "Space theme" and instead of a plain blue background, have the space with stars.
The White marble could be a planet (fictional or a real one), and the black ones could be black holes?

To expand further, everything could be animated as well, the space could have meteorites passing by, galaxies or even scroll as if you were in movement.
The planet could rotate, the black holes could distort the planet if it comes too close to them.

It would help if you gave a description about what you are attempting to do (I am not familiar with the genre of game you are trying to show).

Oh. It's a ball tilting game.

Have you tried adding texture to the wooden background? Wooden materials are famous for their unique wooden texture

Doing that might make the ball and the holes less seen than the background so you could make the ball brighter and add outline to the holes

It depends on what look your going for, if you want the traditional top down it wont look very 3D ish
Gettyimages.ae

While if it is seen from a slight tilt with lower walls it would become 3D
Gettyimages.ca

Your ball currently looks like its being viewed from the front (ie light source is along the top of the ball instead of the center), while your holes look like their being viewed from the top. The holes can be made to look more 3D by making them slightly oval with a visible rim from the players perspective.
Vignette.wikia.nocookie.net

Hope that helps.

What I would do to make it more realistic:

1. Change colors to less pastel.

2. Add some wood texture

3. Use same texture (slightly rotated and lightened up by like 10-15%) on the borders instead of just a gradient.

4. Harden the shadows and modify them so they appear only on bottom/right sides (imagine a light at top left side)

5. Ad a light border around holes.

6. Remove gradient from the hole insides (ive replaced it with some barely visible "light" from top).

7. I would modify the ball so it matches top left light as borders, and modify its shadow so it match it too.

I implemented nearly all above (i used Your ball instead of making new one with correct lighting, but Ive modified the shadow). Thats the effect:

If You use Gimp and like the one above, just PM me. I'll send You .xcf file with all the layers so You can see how its done and use it freely.

@Edit

You can use any other textures instead of wood f.e. metal ones. It gives quite nice effect too:

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Edited by: TommyW84