[Freddy]

The last three images are rather indefinite for my taste - the main character doesn't come to light. The first one looks the most professional to me, but it looks the least sketchy among them. Maybe you could play with the third one from the top, it kind of looks promising, regarding to the sketchy and occult requirement.

Of course, when an art comes to deal, impressions are personal, and each human has a different taste. Don't pick up what you assume others would like. Pick up what you find the coolest, and you won't make a mistake.

I know what you mean with the unclear features - this could be fixed in the process. Typically I had not saved the first one, but was able to make something that is sort of an aggregate of them all.

Different situations will call for different solutions. I like the general look of this one though.

[ivan.moony]

This specimen is pretty awesome to me. I liked how a single drawing style seamlessly blended over different illustration elements. If only contrast between the detective and background could be better, but even this way, the more I look at it, the more I like it. The illustration has some underground mood i dig. Dark colors could match the occultist theme.

[WriterOfMinds]

I also like the third one from the top, out of your original four options.  If you keep the dark orange/sepia background but bring some of the colors back in to the main character and his clothes, I think that would do nicely.  (Your aggregate version also looks pretty good to me.)

[Freddy]

Thanks for your observations, I'll keep playing with it, but I agree something between the dark one and towards the aggregate one look like the way to be going.

[Freddy]

I also like the third one from the top, out of your original four options.  If you keep the dark orange/sepia background but bring some of the colors back in to the main character and his clothes, I think that would do nicely.  (Your aggregate version also looks pretty good to me.)

I tried that and I quite like it - this brings the flesh, tie, shirt and other colours back.

Looks pretty good with a dark background, which is what it will be used on: https://innsmouthgames.com/

Side by side:

[Art]

At first glance, it looks as though he doesn't have a thumb but once I made out a faint outline, I noticed some lines that normally wouldn't indicate natural thumb creases.
His right eye seems to be almost closed compared to the original.

Perhaps a foggy ball of light emanating from his right hand but not blurring the rest of his body so much. Perhaps from his palm downward and outward, gently illuminating the rest of his body & face but not so much as to obfuscate all the details.

Of course, this type of artwork, as mentioned, is very subjective. So far so good.

[Freddy]

I think it's okay that some things don't look well defined. The brain tends to fill in things like that - I hadn't picked up on the thumb, but the eye a little.

Think of this as me searching for a style that people like the look of - I don't know if I will use this exact same image in the game so far.

All art is subjective, all art is also quite useless. Points for the reference!

[Freddy]

Playing some more with the graphics. I think I am going to go with the darker look that we seem to like.

What do you guys think of this?

[Freddy]

A period gun, the M1917 revolver.

[Freddy]

This is how it looks in game at the moment. I am still experimenting with how the game interface will look.

At the moment, it's like a baize desktop. I will be making icons and things to go on it too.

So far I have the text box with an old typewriter font and it plays a typing sound when it's printing. The images come up on the right. I have the text box showing the history of the chat, but I'm not sure if that's really needed.

[Freddy]

A better version of the gun I feel.

[HS]

Maybe it needs some texture?  Some sort of weathering.

[Freddy]

I felt it looks sort of old already. Don't forget at the time it would have been a new gun.

I've soon realised that I needed to set something up to handle all this new stuff. So I have started a new forum here:

https://innsmouthgames.com/forum/index.php

I'd like to invite anyone interested to come join me over there.

The game will be free to play, it might be donation supported perhaps - to help pay for things needed along the way. There's also a call for contributors, so if you enjoy writing fiction then maybe think about it. Full credits given in the game and on site!

In a couple of weeks I am aiming to have a demo running, with just a few locations, just to see if things work right and to get feedback on the game in general.

I'll post updates here, but the majority of the time it will be over there now. I will still continue to update progress of the ElfScript engine.

[Freddy]

Working on the interface, I had a suggestion that the typing output might look good on old paper.

How does this look?

The top bit is chat history, the larger text is the current response. You can see I got the dice working now too 

[Don Patrick]

The text looks much better on this. Maybe the paper needn't be quite that deeply tea-coloured though, maybe mushed, like someone slipped you a note. The text does need a bit more spacing left and right. The photo with shadow looks great, but the background is still a little too monotone. Maybe you could have a shadow loom over a corner, or make the surface less pristine, some discoloration where the dice are if that is the main use of that spot. The dice look very real (I assume you'll give them shadows later). Excellent work.