Quote from: Cathode Ray on March 19, 2025, 08:30:05 AMIn one of my RPG modules, Radical High: Freshman Orientation 1985

Good lord, I remember all of these people.

Quote from: FishMeisterSupreme on March 19, 2025, 12:11:24 AMYou find an artist for your game who will work for free. Whether they be a player or DM. However, all of the characters are rendered in their artstyle. They refuse to change it whatsoever. They are a very good artist.

Taking into account that generative AI is not allowed (due to reasons), which would you rather have: a cartoony artstyle or a realistic artstyle?

It totally depends.

One of the only artists we've found who gives prices and offers commercial use licensing does OSR "horror" style art. We like it, but it doesn't fit any of our story universes. (We are doing RPGs based on the universes from our fiction. Oh, his style does fit one of our universes - but it is the unpublished horror universe. Of course.)

Cartoony fits our Nano-Sapiens universe. Dogs and cats become people through nanotech shots and go off into the universe with humans and make friends with vaguely Earth-base animal aliens and fight the evil Monarch Butterfly Empire.

Realistic fits the universe from our first (unpublished) novel - non-historical fantasy set in our past, where dragons roamed the Old West.

Depends on the game itself. I hate anime-style art in pretty much anything. Just not into it. Cartoony non-anime for a non-serious game, realistic non-anime for a serious game.

Quote from: Zalman on March 19, 2025, 07:35:08 AMI prefer cartoony art, but with a serious -- not comic -- tone. Trampier and Otus both produced prime examples of what I mean (though Trampier also did realistic pieces; I like Treasure! better¹ than the Gamma World cover, for example).

¹ even better I should say.

More or less the same for me. I'd lean ever so slightly towards cartoony instead of realistic. However, my main concern is to avoid the uncanny valley.  I think every piece Wayne Reynolds ever did manages to sit right in the middle of the uncanny valley.

With sci/fi, current day, that sort of thing, I'd lean more towards realistic, though any game I'd be doing will be ancient/medieval fantasy.  For fantastical, I prefer the cartoon side of the uncanny valley, because there are very few artists I'd trust to consistently pull of realistic in that vein.  And some of them, even though there is nothing wrong with what they are doing, work in styles that don't appeal to my tastes. If it is some relative amateur doing stuff for free, then I expect mistakes.  So I land on the cartoon side almost by default.

What I'd really like is all my art done by Monet, or maybe Cezanne in a pinch, leaning towards their less abstract pieces.  While we are at it, I'd like a pony too.

Two different games I like, both of a player fighting an undead.  One is cutesy, one is serious.  I like both because both books use the same art throughout their book. 

The cute one is Dungeons & Delvers Dice Pool, the other is Kogarashi.

I prefer that the art fit the tone and content of the game.  There shouldn't be a jarring mismatch between the system and the art.  One example of this is Iron claw.  A fair amount of the art is done  in a cartoony Disney style reminiscent of the animated Disney Robin Hood movie.  The cover is done in this style.  This art suggests that the game will be a rollicking adventure in the style of those Disney movies.  This is not what the system actually delivers.  It's actually a pretty gritty sort of system.  This is the sort of tonal mismatch I don't like.  A gritty historical game should have naturalistic art that reflects that tone.  A game like Fight! that's based on 2d fighting games should have art reminiscent of those games.

Evocative and appropriate to the tone and style of the game.  In general, I feel realistic artwork aims at the lowest common denominator, misses, and hits the ground but that's not to say that cartoonish or stylized art can't do the same.  Imagine Twilight 2000 with Looney Toons for artwork.

Realistic

Quote from: Zalman on March 19, 2025, 07:36:53 AM

Quote from: Crusader X on March 19, 2025, 06:29:13 AMWhat do you mean by Cartoony?  What would be some examples?  Jeff Dee's art was very comic-booky.  Do you consider that to be cartoony?

That's certainly what I mean by it, and Dee is perhaps the best example of all.

Your idea of "cartoony" then is far far removed from mine.

lol you get what you pay for... But I prefer more serious artwork then too cartoony.