Doll art creeps me the hell out.

I like paper miniatures (mostly because I can't afford to ship lead to SE Asia, but that's beside the point). In the past 5 years or so the quality of paper minis has jumped a lot, and it's possible to get flats for any genre imaginable and they often rival the average miniatures setup in appearance. Then there's Arion Games. They may have the single biggest line of paper miniatures and every last one of them is a Poser model that looks absolutely wretched. I figure either (stupid) people are buying them or the guy who makes them has an obsessive compulsive disorder that forces him to churn out another set of them weekly. In any case, just pasting jpegs of painted miniatures into a Word document and hitting print gives better results than Arion Games.

http://drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/667/Arion-Games

The Pathfinder pawns look pretty good and are relatively inexpensive.  The only problem is organizing and transporting a significant number of them so I can find the one I want.

Cyberworld used photography of people in costume for most of its art. Which makes sense since its a LARP.

Quote from: Omega;913963Cyberworld used photography of people in costume for most of its art. Which makes sense since its a LARP.

As did the very polarizing Book of Erotic Fantasy.

Quote from: Harlock;914001As did the very polarizing Book of Erotic Fantasy.

Which means there actually were D&D pornstars before there were D&D Pornstars™.

Quote from: Omega;913963Cyberworld used photography of people in costume for most of its art. Which makes sense since its a LARP.

The guy on the bottom left in the hat always plays a samurai/spec-ops/assassin kind of guy and knows (or thinks he knows) everything there is to know about firearms and martial arts.  Just look at him.

The guy on the bottom right with the soul patch and shades is banging at least two of the chicks in the top row.

The guy with the full goat and glasses is the richest of all these people.

The guy on the far right has thought about showing up with a real pistol in that case...more than once.

The guy in white pants in the middle has no idea why the fuck he's still playing.

Most of the illustrations in A-State are digital art... but while they're nothing great they don't bug me in that context and seem to fit the weird setting. Uncanny Valley is a good fit for that game.

The cheap CG art for d20 Deathnet was a minour turn-off for me.

The 'doll art' in Cyberpunk was particularly bad because it was particularly badly done.  I think that in theory, it might have been possible to do something with that style but better.  It would still be risky of course.

The trick with doll art is that the closer you get the more it becomes clear that it's a doll.  So, in almost all cases it looks better from a distance. The high end figures can be posed very naturalistically and be very realistically equipped.  But in a close up they still look like dolls.

Theres some people on DA who make some pretty real looking dolls and figurines. But like a good painting art piece. That costs. And like the cheap Poser art some use, off the shelf dolls with some G-I Joe type accessories are dirt cheap.

I like the idea of using photos of dolls and toys for art - if I were playing a doll or a toy. It might also be acceptable or even work well on projects where the toys have a high nostalgia factor. G.I. Joe toys on a G.I. Joe RPG, He-Man toys with a He-Man RPG, etc.

EDIT: Of course, they need to be really well posed and photographed, which probably would require a professional to do so.

Quote from: Harlock;914001As did the very polarizing Book of Erotic Fantasy.

As does my own Corporia.

Quote from: Mark Plemmons;916589As does my own Corporia.

I just Goggled Corporia and dude, your game looks bad ASS!