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Pictures in Storygames

13 years ago
I remember that if you used to want to get a featured story, March would come around and be like: "yeah it's decent, but where's your pictures?" And if they weren't entered, you wouldn't get featured. That's why there's some super shitty pictures at the beginning of Mattias, haha. Anyways, I'm still against pictures as a whole, particularly for fantasy stories. They really have to be done right (see: Mommy and Endmaster's stories for example) to be a positive contribution to prose. Opinions?

Pictures in Storygames

13 years ago

As a general rule I can take or leave pictures. I only really used them for GZ and Necro since I was sort of experimenting with using them. I probably won't bother doing it again, mainly because it's really damn difficult to find that exact picture that you're looking for.

I think I probably searched for every post apocalyptic pic on the net when I was writing GZ and still didn't necessarily find what I needed. In some cases I used something else instead (Hey zombie pics get the point across that mutants ate you just as well). I was using a lot of movie and video game pics, comics as well. Most of it from the 80s since there was a shitload of Mad Max rip offs and quite few video games with post apocalyptic themes (Used the original Fallouts quite a bit obviously). Of course if I was making Ground Zero now I'd probably find pictures a lot easier given stuff like Fallout 3, Borderlands, Book of Eli, The Road and a bunch of similar stuff has come out since then!

Necro was sort of easier. It was a lot shorter for one thing and there's LOTS of fantasy pics out there. My main thing was just finding the right kind of cloaked faceless figure to represent the Necromancer in certain parts. Plus I was adding text to certain pics. The pic on the front with the Necromancer and his queen before you actually click on the story was shopped so that the cloaked figure and that girl are together. I'm still sort of surprised how good I managed to make it look considering I was using MS Paint and my art skills are crap. (Hence why I wasn't just drawing this stuff to begin with)

I also felt it was important to add a pic to every page I created too, so that it wouldn't look inconsistant. I almost added pics to Death Song when I was doing that one, but ultimately I was having a harder time finding the right ones for certain pages so I decided it would be easier to forget the pics and just leave the story pictureless.


Pictures in Storygames

13 years ago
You know, generally when one has a "general rule", it doesn't account for every outcome, haha. I like how your general rule doesn't preclude either way of doing it.

The pictures in Ground Zero and Necromancer are incredibly well selected and I definitely think they don't detract from the story but I'd say for the most part, unless the selection process is THAT good, it can sometimes clash with how the author's written the descriptions or set the mood.

I will say though, a well done map will almost never disrupt the way the story goes.

Pictures in Storygames

13 years ago

I think if someone has the abilty to make the pictures themselves, they could be an awesome addition. But most people on here (me included) seem to have to rely on pics from the net.

Pictures in Storygames

13 years ago

Agreed. The only picture editing software I have is MS Paint. I can create true art with that! Take that, Picasso.

Pictures in Storygames

13 years ago
Get GIMP if you can't get Photoshop.