Many amazing artists create countless gorgeous games every day. It's kind of ridiculous the rate that we're pumping these masterpieces in our industry. Nevertheless, that is not what this thread is about!

My question is: what artistic inspirations do you have outside of games?

This topic was inspired by Joseph Humphry's Gamasutra blog post, where he talks about using public domain anatomical drawings to create the collage art in his game Frankenstein, and being inspired by 1930s travel posters when creating 80 Days.

I love sharing inspirations -- it adds to everyone's knowledge-base and makes all our games better. Curious if anyone has other unusual inspirations for their visual design. Or if you've seen a piece of artwork that inspired a game.

To start off, I've always been enamoured with Saul Bass movie posters and their copycats:

I'm actually trying this in the prototypes I'm making now. Seems it could be a cool direction!

I like checking out the MET collection as well as some other museum collections online. I love looking at the paintings, especially 19th and 20th century pieces. Really amazing stuff and gets the juices flowing.

MET Collection

I use pinterest to collect reference together, including artistic style, photographic reference, and information. I dunno if anyone else does that? Might be kinda cool to share with other people?

Mine's at https://www.pinterest.com/cuddlycolin/

-CuddlyColin

I'm always seeing art styles and places I want to rip off make something like. Sometimes I'll take a walk on Google Earth or in real life, around town, and ideas for scenarios and places will come into my head. I never outright plaigarise anything, unless it was something that actually happened, or if it's too similar, I credit the original.

I also find I have more ideas the more eventful my life is. Sitting and waiting for them to come doesn't work, and a lot of my games are set on Earth, or inspired by reality.