Default Replacement Project

Hi deestarr .

As one's taste is a personal and subjective thing, can you please give some examples of artists who you do appreciate? Then, at least, more 'personalized'/focused recommendations could be made. My personal favorites may not at all be to your liking, for example... De gustibus non est disputandum. Cheers!

Hi deestarr!

Thanks! That really helps! Personally, I really like the Caesar imagery, as I was unfamiliar with his work.(!) One of the reasons that I felt compelled to ask/chime in on your post is because I recently (relatively) did a Default Replacement (NoCC) re-texturing of most of the 'QA' (expensive) paintings in the base game with paintings by my personal favorite 'neo-classical' artist Roberto Ferri, as I wanted to replicate that 'Felix Andre' look. I also am a big fan of Mark Ryden, as well. Sanjay Patel, Haruyo Morita, Maxfield Parrish also come to mind as possible 'future Masters of their fields'. DeviantArt is an Amazing place to find new artists, but be warned - it is way too easy (for me, at least) to do what I call 'Fall into a DA hole', and find yourself 8 hours of browsing later wondering what you went there for... o_0

The most relevant questions, I feel, to ask yourself before undertaking this endeavor would be:

- Who is your Target Audience? Is it you, or others? If only yourself, then there should be no question as to what art to use - use what "Imparts Happiness to You"!
- What kind of aesthetic are you wanting to achieve? A somewhat Maxis-match one, or a more 'alpha'-look. If the latter, it can be somewhat difficult to find art that looks descent in-game at maybe 200 pixels high compared to 900 pixels when you first found it...

The most Important thing to do with art, above all other considerations (to me, at least), is to respect the art itself, and NOT 'squish' nor 'pull' the art into whatever frame you are doing at the time. I try my best to use only an original aspect ratio of the frame, and if I feel that by cropping any particular image to get it to fit destroys the overall image, or lessens the impact of it by leaving some of the image out, I will move on to another image that does fit/work. If I am 'at it again' with making a new batch of 'NoCC' Default Replacements, what I like to do first, to help, is to separate the images into landscape & portrait folders, then work from there (per frame mesh as needed...).

I can explain further, if you wish, what I mean by 'NoCC' re-textures. It is something that I have been meaning to write a tutorial on for some many months now, and is something that I have only ever seen two others accomplish (the original person and one other).

I sincerely do not mean, if I did that is, to come across as pretentious or condescending at all. Apologies if I did. I didn't want to be recommending Joel Peter Witkin to someone who may be more Anne Geddes. Cheers!

I started a project like this myself as well. I personally search an artist / art type that I like within Pinterest to find other similar works. 
A few artist that I have used within my game that go along with Ray Caesar are: 

• Omar Rayyan
• Naoto Hattori
• Martin Wittfooth 
• Roby Dwi Antono
  
• Brian Despain
  
• Allison Sommers
  
• Steven Kenny