I'm not a terribly visual person, but there are a lot of things that I draw from when I make games even with that being my predisposition.

(questions and image from autocratik.blogspot.com)

Obviously there's some caveats here; I'm a fan of a whole bunch of different genres, and when I play or make games I need to find fitting things.

I get a lot of my inspiration art from public domain sources, and I keep a certain amount of stuff in reserve. The real reason for this is simply that I'm fond of avoiding any IP entanglements, though you'd have a hard time infringing on an image when working on a game, but there's also a certain element of liking tradition.

velotha's flock

velotha's flock is incredibly focused on having a foundation in the narrative structures and traditions rather than necessarily being mimetic. I looked at a lot of public domain images from old engraved prints and the like to get inspiration, especially those of sacred works, and there's a strict eschatological bent to a lot of the inspirational source material.

I like this as a conceit because it pushes one toward sort of a mystical and unknowable world, but one that has strong ties to the patterns and currents of reality.

This is also a weird case because there were a number of things that I modified and altered by hand, which is interesting from a design perspective. Generally this was just fixing minor things and changing levels so the images looked clearer, but it was still one of the few times I really touched anything in my work.

This would be an example of the sort of old religious woodcut that I'd use as a basis for velotha's flock related art and inspiration. I don't remember the artist (I forgot to write it down), but I got it from the New York Public Library archives.

This is another example of an old illustration (not a woodcut) that I took and altered a little. Also from the NYPL archives.

Other Stuff

So a lot of other stuff didn't have quite as much of a reference corpus as the stuff in velotha's flock, or it's changed a lot from its original form.

I used to have a whole folder of random stuff I found on the internet, including things like Magic the Gathering cards and a lot of stuff by Peter Mohrbacher (link leads to some of my favorites). That was a lot of the inspiration for what went into the Unsung Gods/Othenar setting, because I loved the surreal and fear-worthy creatures that Mohrbacher created.

I also take a lot of inspiration from film and games. Street Rats was basically "What if we did Cyberpunk, but Borderlands/Mad Max style?", though there was never really any art made for it because I was still a starving college student while working on it. On the occasions I revisit it, it's gotten a more synthwave inspired appearance overlaid on top of the cyberpunk, and I'm a little sad to say that the closest fit is the new Rage game that's coming out, because now if I return to it everyone will just think I'm being derivative (cyberpunk set in the middle of a desert tends to be that way).

There's also stuff like what Zonked draws, and I've had the privilege of working with him on an upcoming project.

When I Play

When I play games, I tend to get really into the source materials. My favorite go-to game for this is Degenesis, but I've also found the in-line illustrations of Legend of the Five Rings and Shadowrun to be really helpful as tone setters and inspiration.

I also draw a lot from things like Blade Runner when I try to set up narration; simple scenes with limited motion and key focal points always work better for picturing and describing settings, but you also get scenes with enough momentum in them to really work well.

I was also a big fan of Battletech as a kid, and while I haven't had the chance to work or play anything with giant robots in a while (barring a little bit in a test campaign for Hammercalled, but we've only had one session and my group's kinda flaky) I'll still crack a book open to look at the pictures before a game. Symbaroum and Coriolis are also books I find to have some really good art in them, and I've been known to revisit some of the art in Eclipse Phase (but not all; they have some issues with their freelancers) when I need inspiration.

I guess it says something as to how far I'm embedded in tabletop roleplaying when that's half of my inspirations.

I'm also a big fan of movie/video game/etc. trailers when I need to quickly get a vision for something or get into a certain mood. Music videos work too, but I find that there are times when they do and don't help (plus, a lot of that tends to overlap with how I use music for games, which I'll go into more detail about tomorrow).

Wrapping Up

Probably 90% of my inspiration comes from film. Not every film; there are a few that I consider to be shining examples of photography and visual imagery (things like Mad Max: Fury Road, Blade Runner and its sequel, and a surprising amount of Netflix/Amazon original TV series), and a lot of my focus there is on particular snippets like trailers, intros, outros, and the like.

However, I also look at a lot of art, especially classic art of the sort of illustrations that get done for tabletop games, when I'm trying to go through stuff. I have folders with literally hundreds of reference images sorted by genre and characters represented, so I've got a lot of stuff to look through, but I often find just picking up an existing book and thumbing through it to be as useful.