This entry is part 8 in the series Priorities Of Graphic Depiction
The story so far…

This is the last in a set of mini-posts that I have written and published as quickly as possible (given a number of health-related interruptions), something I’m calling a mini-blitz. My normal publication schedule will resume at the end of the series.

Each of the posts so far has examined one of the specific image categories nominated in the first post of the series, dividing them up into strata of commonality (if you’re looking for a specific article in the series, there’s a list at the end of this article).

The goal has been to define a set of policies, processes, and principles that use the game value of the result to define how and how hard it is worth searching for a particular image within each category / strata combination. Along the way, there have been a number of tips and tricks to enhance the productivity of specific image searches.

This final part of the series will look at more than a dozen example images from my different campaigns, sharing a few war stories along the way, and giving me a last chance to offer some final hints and tips. In a few cases, concerns about copyright restrictions, or about associating real people with in-game identities of which those real people might not approve, have led me to drop in a couple of ringers of more impeccable credentials.

1. Dr Who Materialization

I always open a Dr Who adventure with the materialization scene, in which the TARDIS appears from nowhere. These are “unique” images that are hand-crafted from a location image; I’ve previously isolated a TARDIS image and partially faded it’s lower half, giving the impression that it’s fading in – in fact, I have three different ones showing slightly different angles and fades.

These composite images are the very literal essence of establishing shots, giving a graphic depiction of the locale in which the adventure is to take part. Sometimes, it will show something critical to the adventure, but more often, the location will be used to set a tone for the location, permitting more important location images to be placed within a context and interpreted correctly.

In direct terms, the game value of these illustrations is minimal, but with these added benefits, considerable effort is easily justified. And, on top of that, they serve as punctuation, signaling that the adventure is moving forward.

In order to preserve this function, I am careful to avoid depicting materialization scenes mid-adventure – I’ll show the Tardis already in place, instead.

I discovered the power of the materialization scene by accident in the course of adventure two of the current Dr Who campaign. So far, materialization has been shown on the planets Oa and Escar, an alien monastery, a cargo hold aboard the colony ship Carthage, the dry stores compartment of the nuclear submarine USS Ardent, the TARDIS docking bay on Gallifrey, An alien wasteland on Cornova-III, and the hanger of a Gas Giant mining operation.

2. Towns in Zenith-3

In my superhero campaign, the PCs are on a journey of exploration through Arkansas, looking for a suitable location for a base of operations. There are hundreds of these, which poses a different challenge – trying to distinguish one from another..

Overall, I employ a structured approach to representing these towns. I start by writing the history and demographics of the place, as delivered by the guidebooks being used as primary reference material by the PCs. That gives me a sense of the character of the location.

Next, I search for key images to convey that character – my first preference is to use actual images from the location, my second preference is to use a high-quality similar image, my third preference is a screen capture from Google streetview.

There is a focus on the economy of the location (banks and shops); then a focus on the culture (parks, churches, government), then anything unusual or distinctive.

Where a town has something that distinguishes it, I’ll often front-load that to appear in advance of anything else.

Next, I need to convey a sense of the housing commonly available in the location. Real Estate websites and Google Streetview are my primary sources for these images.

After that come any images of potential bases, described in-game as Contenders. There are several sources for these – to start with, I have a list that I generated before starting; if any image found for the town matches one of those, it might well find itself situated within the town in question. Next, there are any images of the town that show buildings that are obviously suitable. And sometimes there are notable buildings identified in the research back at the start of the process.

Increasingly, as planned, these travels are being used as a delivery mechanism for interesting encounters and mini-adventures – for example, two of the PCs are currently attempting to rescue some kayakers from some giant (sentient) spiders. These collectively are telling a broader story about the game setting, a foundation that will be used for later adventures. These need to be illustrated, as well; and all these illustrations then have to be integrated into a single cohesive and coherent narrative.

Occasionally adding to all this are maps, which are employed only sparingly, but sometimes nothing less will suffice.

To represent these, I have chosen a trio of images.

To start with, we have a mountain road which is leading to Hollis. Actually, I think it’s a generic image result that matched the narrative of the scene.

Next, we have a somewhat unusual potential base – an abandoned logging camp. This is actually a composite image generated to match the narrative. The biggest change was transforming an Autumn scene into a Summer scene. If you look closely, you can still see the dead leaves on the roofs of the buildings – I decided to leave them there as leaves and debris would have accumulated over time, and any leaf falling would have died no matter what it’s state was beforehand. But leaves like those were everywhere on the ground, and there was no green foliage visible behind the buildings when I started.

Finally, here’s an example of a potential base that wasn’t pre-planned – this was simply a large house that turned up in an image search for Pine Bluff.

Oh, all right – one more, just because I’m very pleased with it! This image, which brings a whole new meaning to the term ‘ghost town’, has not yet appeared in-game. It has been built around a screen capture from Google Street View, as you can tell by the map inset in the lower left corner. Each of the buildings was individually sourced and composited, and then I used the same sort of ‘fade effect’ that was used with the TARDIS Materialization image (shown earlier) to create the Ghost effect. (ADDENDUM: I wasn’t sure that readers would get the full effect at the reduced size, so you can now click on the image to get the full-sized image in another tab).

3. Locations in Pulp

A Pulp setting brings a different set of problems and opportunities. These adventures are set in a time when there were cameras, so for every image search, you have to choose between searching for a modern image and searching for one appropriate to the era of the setting.

There are so many considerations that go into that decision that it’s almost instinctive. How likely is it that the location has changed since the 1930s? In many cases, the answer will be, massively; in other cases, the answer is “not at all’. There is also an element of practicality, of ‘this is what we can find’.

A third consideration is how picturesque any period images might be. Part of the remit of such campaigns is to bring the era to life as a game setting, and “color” from back then helps achieve that.

For example, from the current adventure, we have the San Juan police having a parade…

Yes, those are tanks being shown off by the police force…

….and then there is this image of Rio:

Notice how there’s virtually no-one visible in the street. Conclusion: The downpours are reasonably predictable!

But here, for contrast, is a modern image of the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine from our previous adventure (which was written before the current invasion started):

Very picturesque!

And, of course, sometimes there’s nothing for it but to create your own. In the part of this series that covered locations, I displayed the image of the Valley that I manufactured for the current adventure, for example, and for the next adventure, here’s the airfield hanger from Twin Bridges, Montana – winterized.

It was clearly summer in the original image.

4. NPCs In Pulp 1: specific NPCs

The same considerations are in play when it comes to NPCs, especially real people from the era – usually politicians, occasionally actors and businessmen, but also thrown into the mix are official portraits. But we’ve used everything from toys to propaganda posters as sources.

We’ve found that if we can get a name, we can usually get an image. It’s when no name can be turned up in our research that images become hard to find.

And yet, there are strange anomalies. There are relatively few images available of New York mayor LaGuadia, for example, so we’ve had to recycle and reuse the same two or three images multiple times.

This is actually a composite of two images, if I remember rightly – the hand is from a toy, but was further enhanced with digital paintwork, and the color deepened.

5. NPCs In Pulp 2: important NPCs

When we can’t identify a real person, usually because it’s a character created specifically for the adventure, we have to use someone else’s image to represent them.

Our primary criteria is always to select images that show a lot of personality, first because they tend to be more interesting to look at, and secondly because we can use the personality content as inspiration. Generally, I will perform the initial selection and present a set of 4 or 5 possible choices to my co-GM, who narrows the choice down to a couple; I then make the final selection from that pair.

There are five general searches that we use to generate the short list, and we only move on to the next one on the list if the current search hasn’t produced enough results that fit whatever criteria we have applied.

Those criteria usually include image size as well as image content, and the presence of any anachronisms that can’t get painted out – sunglasses were uncommon except by prescription, and T-shirts had not yet been invented except as undershirts, for example. Digital watches are a definite no-no, as are mobile phones!

Telephone styles in general are often a problem – no pushbuttons allowed! But there are innumerable ways to trip up if you aren’t careful – we once found what we thought was the perfect “look” for one of our NPCs, only to notice at the last minute that a computer monitor was reflected in the lenses of his glasses. It was only faint, but once you saw it, you couldn’t unsee it.

Tie styles are another trap – especially when it comes to images from the 70s! Too wide or too colorful or with anything other than a simple pattern – they are all incorrect for the time period.

The five criteria are Emotion/Style, Occupation, Descriptive Terms, Descriptive Synonyms, and Antonyms.

    Emotion/Style

    The first choice of search is always to try and match the overall emotion or style that we want the character to possess. “Angry Man”, “Suave Man”, “Determined Woman”, etc. It is also common to add “1930s” as an additional search term.

    Occupation

    It’s also normal for us to replace “Man” or “Woman” with an occupation. “Angry Lawyer” or “Angry Lawyer 1930s” are far more likely to give useful results.

    Descriptive terms

    If that finds too many images, or doesn’t find enough, we add some descriptive terms to the search. “Blonde” or “Tall” or “Scarred”, for example. Due to the way search engines work, this works in either situation.

    Descriptive Synonyms

    But, sometimes, even this fails to find a suitable image, or enough suitable images for a full short list. When these searches fail, it’s time to replace the occupation with another descriptive term; we will often have to try several synonyms because this search is less likely to produce satisfactory results.

    Antonyms

    Being forced to compromise is sometimes not enough. Our last resort is usually to replace some of the search terms with antonyms, because a character who “doesn’t look the type” can often be used in place of a character who does.

I decided not to use any of the archived images I have stored away as examples because I couldn’t be sure which ones were in the public domain and which were not. Instead, I went hunting and found the image below.

This image came from searching on Pixabay, my go-to clip art source, for “Dangerous Man”. It’s exactly what might be used for a featured criminal in a pulp campaign. Image by Sammy-Sander from Pixabay

6. NPCs In Pulp 3: generic NPCs

I’ll let you in on a little secret: there are no generic NPCs per se in our pulp campaign. We treat every NPC as though they were Important; the only difference is that these NPCs tend to have fewer preconceptions. That way, if we – or the players – decide to elevate the character in importance, the image is good enough to support that role within the campaign – though sometimes we won’t name a generic NPC.

An illustrative example took place in Adventure #30 in the campaign, “The Locked Door”. As usual, before the main plot started, we embroiled each of the PCs in a mini-plot that told them where they were and what they were doing when the main plot begins. One of those mini-plots was a restaurant sequence in which a couple of over-excited children were going to interact with a generic mob boss.

After discussing our options, we decided that we wanted to make it clear from the visuals alone that this was a mob boss, and that we would simply describe him as a ‘businessman’. That meant that we needed a really iconic representation; we soon decided that none of the photographic alternatives that we found were quite generically iconic enough, though they might have been fine for a specific crime-boss; that meant using character artwork.

I have the impression that we found the image that we ended up using for ‘Crime Boss At The Restaurant’ on DeviantArt, but a reverse image search doesn’t show it; instead, the image is all over Pinterest in multiple categories.

This is a cropped, enlarged, and sharpened version of the image; you can see the full original image at Pinterest.

While we didn’t name this particular character at the time, we should have done, as it became necessary for some of the restaurant staff to address him by his surname and the mobster’s moll, by his christian name. I think we invented a name on the spot – “Reggie Romano” or something along those lines – but we should have anticipated the need.

7. NPCs In Pulp 4: Undefined NPCs

The less you know about a character, the more inspiration you can draw from a good image – and the more important it is for that image to contain inspiration for you to draw upon.

Perhaps a more typical example comes from Adventure #27, “The Fate Of The Golden King”. We needed a super for a flophouse and after tossing the question of what tone he should project around for a while, settled on “creepy” from memory. Or maybe it was “old man”. In any event, we somehow found an image of Australian author Patrick White, taken in Kings Cross in 1980 by William Yang. I’d love to show it to you, but it’s clearly copyrighted, even though it has appeared on many sites quoting White. You can look at it by clicking on this link.

What we really wanted was someone world-weary, who was tired of fighting for his prosperity every day, bowed down by the burdens casually visited upon him by the transient ‘tenants’ of the flophouse, and who was skirting the edges of sanity without actually crossing that line. The image found doesn’t quote capture all of that, but it comes close enough and looks vaguely unsettling when shorn of its literary context.

8. Priorities In Fantasy

Let’s be honest and clear – there are probably less than 1/10th as broad a subject matter available when it comes to Fantasy as there is for a more modern game setting such as something in the Pulp genre. The consequence is that most of the time, Fantasy images will be much more work to find and the game value of such images will need to be considerably higher in order to justify that effort.

That doesn’t mean that it’s not worth the effort, just that you need to be a little more selective at times. There are plenty of landscapes to use out there, both of exotic locations in our world and the work of a great many talented digital artists. Using the Pulp techniques described, you will often find something suitable for most of the important NPCs and many of the common ones.

The chances of success when searching for the latter are generally enhanced if you add a search term describing what the NPC should be doing in the image – “medieval money counting”, for example. Or “blacksmith forging horseshoes”.

You will often struggle to find illustrations of the more exotic creatures from the many sources both official and unofficial, but casting your net a little wider and being prepared to adapt the creature description and stat block to what you find from an appropriate image source can both broaden the encounters in your game and stir your creativity; that said, though, since 3.0, the artwork in the various official sourcebooks has been excellent and quite suitable as an illustration.

The more outlandish a vehicle or object, the greater the struggle to find a good image, but objects can be surprisingly tricky at times as well. Good photographs of wooden barrels, for example, were hard to find the last time I looked – I actually needed them to insert into a scene for Pulp Ultimately, I ended up making our own image from multiple parts of the one source and adding a barrel-maker to conceal some of the imperfections and prevent the image from being totally static. Again, I don’t think it’s an image that I can share.

To illustrate this section, I thought that I’d offer up a pair of images. The first is of a Bavarian Castle, and the second, a Fantasy Knight in an enchanted Forest..

Neuschwanstein Castle, Image by Unknown author – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress's ;Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID ppmsca.00179. Public Domain image licensed under Commons:Licensing. For more information, see Link

9. Sources Of Sci-Fi

There are some subjects that have very few illustrations in Fantasy but are relatively well-represented in Sci-Fi, and vice versa.

There are hundreds of aliens to pick from, for example, so you have no excuse for not choosing one that exactly matches what you want to convey. There are almost as many spacecraft to choose from. But try searching for a cryogenic chamber! Or a steel coffin…

There are four terms that can be added to searches to increase the chances of finding what you need. The first is the fairly obvious, “SciFi”. The second is a variation on that, “Sci-Fi” – and it will often find results that the first search doesn’t. Third, “Futuristic”, and finally, “Concept Art”.

If none of those work, then it’s time to go without the additional terms and look for a contemporary representation that can be edited.

When it comes to critters and creatures, additional search terms that can be useful are “Fantasy” and “Horror” – plus those listed earlier.

For interiors, it’s not uncommon to have to rename / repurpose depictions of one type of room to another, perhaps adding some window dressing. But it’s worth searching thoroughly because sometimes there can be the perfect image lurking in the results, even if initial attempts are fruitless.

It’s fair to say that greater patience is needed for sci-fi than for anything more contemporary like Pulp. Whether or not it’s worse than fantasy depends on what you are searching for!

“Gadgets” is notable, by the way, as a particularly difficult search term. Try “Machine” or “Device” instead!

This is the look that I chose for the Martians, inventors of Time Travel, in my Zener Gate campaign. The actual image derives from a 2017 movie that has been pretty solidly slammed by reviewers, Valerian And The City Of A Thousand Planets.

Rotten Tomatoes describes the movie as “a visually exquisite but narratively slipshod adventure,” while praising the opening sequence which chronicles the future developments of technology that creates the setting for the movie. “And then the rest of the movie happens.” (From the article ‘30 great scenes in rotten movies‘).

Mr Movies Film Blog’s S-Littner was more generous in his review, in which the film is described as a “visual smorgasbord” and “a breath of fresh air” in a summer of “Lackluster, unimaginative blockbusters”. Connecting the film with the Fifth Element, by the same Director, and from this review I would expect this movie to have a similar feel to it in some respects.

Bill Watters at Bleeding Cool takes a middle-ground position in his review, which he subtitled “Amazing, but with Caveats”. Describing the film as “deeply flawed”, he nevertheless considers it “required viewing” for any fan of the science fiction genre.

And if you’re wondering why I’ve described it so extensively in this caption, it’s because there’s a fair-use exception to copyright when it’s part of a review, so this is what permits me to show the image here!

The second image that I have is designed to show you what is possible with relatively little effort. The original of this image, by Tim Shaw, shows up in multiple places as an example of futuristic architecture (especially Pinterest), which is where I recommend you view it. In creating my version, used for the “Museum Of Realities” on Gallifrey in my current Dr Who campaign, I pushed the contrast and colors to achieve an almost comic-book appearance, then replaced the background with a hand-painted reddish-gold almost sunset-like sky. The net effect is a completely different feel to the building.

10. Sources Of Superheroics

When it comes to superhero campaigns, 25% of the images you need will be modern photographs, 20% can derive from Fantasy sources, 30% from Sci-fi sources, and the last 25% are the most problematic, because they are genre-specific.

In general, that means that the first 25% are fairly easy to find, the next 50% are a little more work, and the last 25% are the most difficult.

When it comes to depicting superheros and villains, you have two choices: use what you can find (possibly editing the colors) or use a service like the Hero Machine. A third choice available only to relatively expert digital artists is to use nude photographs and convert the skin tones into costumes. Be prepared to spend 10-20 hours on each such image, so I reserve it for only the most essential images.

I used this image to represent a tragic NPC named “Skygge” in the Zenith-3 campaign. A parallel-world version of one of the PCs who had barely escaped a horrific experience, only to be found and “rebuilt” as a cyborg by a crazed technologist to preserve her life – temporarily. The original image is named “Cyber Chick” by Lycee Anaya, a 3D artist, and posted to her website as part of her portfolio. From there, it’s appeared all over the place and used to illustrate all sorts of articles.

The Power Of Images

An image, it is said, is worth a thousand words. In the case of the right image, I would tend to agree. But few groups will have the patience to listen to the GM for 1000 words of description and narrative; RPGs are supposed to be interactive.

But that’s only the start of assessing the power of images. The mere fact that you are slicing chunks of narrative out of your delivery and replacing them with an image that can be absorbed and appreciated in a fraction of the time means that images often accelerate the process of play.

And, on top of that, images can conjure emotional reactions, something that prose can sometimes struggle to achieve when delivered orally (which is not the same as reading it on a page).

And, on top of that, there’s the benefit of getting everyone on the same page, as noted in earlier parts of this series.

That’s a powerful weapon to have in your arsenal – but that’s only if the image is right. Those advantages can quickly drain away if you are forced to compromise because you can’t find that “right” image – which may in fact, not even exist.

If you had unlimited time at your disposal, it would be easy to achieve the maximum possible benefits. The reality is that this is a luxury that is a rare event, and that demands that you maximize your efficiency in searching for illustrations, spending your time where you get the biggest return on your investment of time.

Achieving that requires understanding the value to your game of each image relative to the degree of effort required to achieve it, hopefully restricting your compromises and corner-cutting to those illustrations where it doesn’t really matter.

This series has aimed to give the reader that understanding, and a bunch of tips along the way to enhance your prospects of success. Hopefully, it has achieved that purpose.

This series has taken more out of me than I expected, especially with interruptions and delays caused by medical issues. I’m not sure that I’ll have a post ready to go for the usual publishing schedule, though I’ll try.

Image by WallpaperUp.com via Wallpaper Safari, colorized by Mike



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