Tried replying directly to Hughes and got an error message for some reason.
Fair enough. I'm considering trying my hand at tracing photos of the places I'm taking photos of and seeing if I can make backgrounds that way (unless I just slap filters on the photos and call it a day), but drawing people? I think that's too high a hurdle for me, thank you. Also there's the slight issue that I want my game to actually be done at some point. So far I've written 20 000 words (or roughly 44 pages) of dialogue and narration and I've only covered a fraction of the scenes I'm planning to make. If/when the game is done, it'll probably be novel-length in terms of narration/dialogue. Then there's all the time to spend coding, testing, bug fixing, taking photos of locations, etc. Learning to draw people on top of that sounds unrealistic, to say the least.
Sure, you could say people should work around their limitations, but I'd rather my game looks good. And I mean, I'll also be sourcing my music from others, probably a combination of free and licensed works, yet I don't think anyone is going to criticize me for not trying to make my own music, you know? To be frank, I don't understand why the moment we talk of AI, suddenly there's this expectation that creators are supposed to do everything ourselves, or gatekeep creativity by saying it has to be done a certain way, otherwise it shouldn't be done at all.
Also, see the vid by Austin that I linked to.