So long story short I wanted to make an stylized tree, and it looks not as I expected. I know the textures are different but why there is so much shading issues. I used surface appearance on the leaves but it still looks like in the images below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaRwQchlT1U&t=408s (tutorial I used)
Am I going insane, or is this how the leaves are supposed to look?
mmm it could be because your sphere inside is smaller.
What it looks like is going on is because his “bushes” are made with a bigger sphere, they are pushed out more. Making them to be not so concentrated in the center and makes them cast an angled shadow on the lower leaves
The weird shadows are because of the normals
Add the sphere around your bush like in this tutorial and use the data transfer modifier to give it custom normals. Then export and see if you like the difference.