It's kinda funny to see the evolution of the show's backgrounds and effects.
I like to think of it as though DHX had just bought a new videah' game and only had the specs to run it at low quality settings. As time went on, and better hardware, quality settings were getting more and more enabled. From Seasons 1-3 you can see the progression in effects, 'high resolution textures', distanced objects (LODs), Depth of Field, and so on. Season 4 gave us light shafts, better lighting effects and shading, HDR, and so on. Season 5 and 6... I don't remember what they brought, but they definitely are the prettiest of the bunch.
Also, those old Season 1 shots reminded me of the
worst aspect of the show's older design.
Flash gradients.

It ruins everything, somehow. Sparingly they are alright, but the show relied on them too heavily to convey detail. I'm honestly not sure why they did it at times. The flat, bold colored design didn't really need it. Worse is that you could tell they were using flash gradients. Just straight linear gradients... No contour around the objects, no brakes in color. So it's great to see a lot of variation in the shading now. Some of it looks down right fantastic.
Dexanth wrote:I guess Zecora moved from S1 to S6, because the tree is completely different!
...Shhh... That's how it always was, remember? That's the same tree. It was always the same tree- And never wasn't. Shh...
On another note, I love the harsh blue highlight casting from behind the tree. And the wood texture, it's purtty.