Hey, all.
I've been thinking about adding monster artwork to Improbable Island for a long time now. I go through phases, y'see. A typical one will look like this:
"It's a text-based adventure game. No artwork."
"Well, maybe sprite-based artwork. Like an old Amiga game."
"No! Do the artwork in a Victorian-era embossing/woodcut style!"
"ZX SPECTRUM!"
"Fuck off with the ZX Spectrum art style. No."
"Let's do it like a 1950's pulp sci-fi book cover!"
"But I can't draw."
"Pinch it from t'internet!"
"Nah. ANSI art? Using CP437 characters?"
"Thematically appropriate - it'd still be a text-based game - but infeasible. How about some comic-style sketches?"
"If they're black and white, I could recolour them in an appropriate Improbable Island style."
"Why not just go for pixel art? Y'know, the sort of art that looks as though it could have been in an old video game, but is actually nothing like the artwork in old video games?"
"Nah."
"Crowdsource this. Solicit monster artwork from the players."
"No mortal can draw three hundred monster sketches and is willing to do so in exchange for imaginary currency in a game. The styles will mix together to provide an inconsistent look. Also people will be upset when I reject their submissions, or when a better submission for the same monster comes along and I replace theirs."
"It's a text-based adventure game. No artwork."
If anyone has any thoughts, I'd sure like to hear 'em.
How about some comic-style sketches?"
"If they're black and white, I could recolour them in an appropriate Improbable Island style."
"Crowdsource this. Solicit monster artwork from the players."
"No mortal can draw three hundred monster sketches and is willing to do so in exchange for imaginary currency in a game. The styles will mix together to provide an inconsistent look. Also people will be upset when I reject their submissions, or when a better submission for the same monster comes along and I replace theirs."
Hey, all.
"Crowdsource this. Solicit monster artwork from the players."
"No mortal can draw three hundred monster sketches and is willing to do so in exchange for imaginary currency in a game. The styles will mix together to provide an inconsistent look. Also people will be upset when I reject their submissions, or when a better submission for the same monster comes along and I replace theirs."
Here's my vote: no, thank-you to monster sketches generally. In-game pictures will fix a canon representation of any given monster, which means you're destroying the (probably far richer) versions wandering around the heads of all of your players. I do not want someone to dictate for me what the Watcherbots look like, nor The Thing in the Attic, nor abstract things like Procrastination or the sentient Polaroid where the description is centered around something happening to the character. No one is going to get the conception of my own character more right than I can. And -- the Improbability Drive? No. You're going to get a vaguely threatening box from someone. Perhaps it will have a high gain antenna and a menacing face plate. Nothankyou.
However.
I would not be opposed to awesome woodcut-or-embossed style drawings for Improbable Events. Those are special and infrequent and fixed, they stay in the game. I would not mind a horrifying rendition of the Tattoo Mutant or the exterior of the Raven Inn or.. whatever. Stonehenge, the wig rocks. You can get away with the rest of the game not having pictures because they're special events; there's a finite number of them so you can be choosier about the artwork. It will look nicer. It will preserve your tenuous credulity. It will avoid turning us into KoL.
Here's my vote: no, thank-you to monster sketches generally. In-game pictures will fix a canon representation of any given monster, which means you're destroying the (probably far richer) versions wandering around the heads of all of your players. I do not want someone to dictate for me what the Watcherbots look like, nor The Thing in the Attic, nor abstract things like Procrastination or the sentient Polaroid where the description is centered around something happening to the character. No one is going to get the conception of my own character more right than I can. And -- the Improbability Drive? No. You're going to get a vaguely threatening box from someone. Perhaps it will have a high gain antenna and a menacing face plate. Nothankyou.
However.
I would not be opposed to awesome woodcut-or-embossed style drawings for Improbable Events. Those are special and infrequent and fixed, they stay in the game. I would not mind a horrifying rendition of the Tattoo Mutant or the exterior of the Raven Inn or.. whatever. Stonehenge, the wig rocks. You can get away with the rest of the game not having pictures because they're special events; there's a finite number of them so you can be choosier about the artwork. It will look nicer. It will preserve your tenuous credulity. It will avoid turning us into KoL.
Goodness, settle. A different opinion is not grounds for you to show your belly -- especially an opinion from me. 
He asked for opinions. That's all this is.
I think I would have to Agree with Z here. Graphics for every encounter would impede the imagination, but a classic wood-cut style image for improbable events? That actually sounds remarkably appealing.
My $.02~Tor
I think I would have to Agree With Z here. Graphics for every encounter would impede the imagination, but a classic wood-cut style image for improbable events? That actually sounds remarkably appealing.
My $.02~Tor
I think that the Drive could be approximated with a digital avatar or model created in a game engine. Sort of like the race pictures. And of course it would be opt-in, not vice versa.
After review of the facts presented by the veritable Miss Tisty, I'll second that. Those with more colourful imagination might be put off by our crude drawings and where would we be then? If the more interesting players are driven away in tears after having their dreams of exactly what the Island's various monsters look like shattered by other players, we'd be left with a rather boring place indeed.
In short, while there are people who definitely will continue to sketch monsters and events, and even other players, it should all stay mostly non-canon for the good of the people.
My late two cents... I think that drawing 300 monsters would probably be a bit over the top... while I do agree that having them done by various people would just add to the improbability, I think it could stifle some imagination... UNLESS... there were some way to have multiple images for the same monster and one would randomly pop up each time you encountered it... this would also solve the problem of hurting people's feelers if a "better" image came along. Plus, if someone imagined it differently, *shrug* they could submit other art for it.
IF you wanted to to an art style that would be simple, I would suggest something similar to the style used on the cards for the game Fluxx, now in Zombie and Monty Python versions. It works in both B/W and in color.
The Improbable Island Enquirer - Forum
http://enquirer.improbableisland.com/forum/viewtopic.php?showtopic=5946
.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070223b/barton_pfv.htm&usg=__9u_hzX-1elhbG41BNzbGa3viQ2Q=&h=363&w=575&sz=41&hl=en&start=42&um=1&tbnid=LK2kQPqw5_aUqM:&tbnh=85&tbnw=134&prev=/images%3Fq%3Damiga%2Bmonsters%2Bgraphics%26ndsp%3D21%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US<img align=absmiddle src='images/smilies/surprised.gif' alt='Surprised!'>fficial%26sa%3DN%26start%3D21%26um%3D1){kind=link}