About the screenshots...
Why did you throw out all the old graphics and start again?
The old graphics had two great problems: they were insonsistent, and they weren't polished. That's because this game is about the story, not the pictures. I hoped that people would play the game anyway, and then get used to the art and start to like it.
However, in early 2007 I sent a very early build of the game for alpha testing, and everyone said the art was its weakest point. It doesn't matter how good the story is, if the art looks bad then most people simply won't try it.
Another problem is that even simple art takes a very long time to draw, especially iof there are animations. The crunch came when I received the first specially composed music, and tried it with one of my animations. The music was wonderful, powerful, emotuional stuff, and even though I had spent a month on the animation it still wasn't good enough. I could not portray the necessary emotion with this style. So the only choice was to adopt a different style that could display emotion more effectively.
I finally opted for a minimalist syle for the characters, as this allows the user to create the details in their head. It also allows me to create soemthing looking smoother and more stylish, but in less time than the previous method.
Do you have copyright permission to use all your source images?
Yes.
The law on derivative art is very clear: no matter how much a photo or painting (or music) is changed, the user still needs permission to use it. So for every image (or piece of music) that appears in the game (and there are thousands) I have kept written documentation to show that it is legal. For many of these resources, the usage agreement includes the original author's name at the start of the game. At any point in the game you can press 'C' on the keyboard and see copyright details for the images and music in the current scene. For a game of this size I have to rely on the generosity of others (or on buying stock commercial images) or else I could never complete it on schedule. Sadly, I was unable to gain permission to use some of the images that I most wanted, either because the authors never responded, or the permission they gave was too vague, or they asked more money than I would afford. Such is life.
Where do the pictures come from?
Most of the scenes in Les Miserables are hand drawn by me, using photos as reference material. But the rest of the game has scenes drawn from a number of different sources.
Around four out of five pictures in the game are adapted from photos or paintings by other people. Some (such as the Don Davis NASA images) are explicitly public domain. Others (such as the large images of people) are bought from commercial stock photo providers. Some (such as the Peter Bruegel tower of Babel) are long out of copyright. Others (the majority) are by kind permission of individual photographers who are credited in the game. And a few (such as the dark caves) are from photos I took all by myself. Some of the surreal images are created using a licensed copy of Pixara's Twisted Brush, others involve the use of freeware mathematical programs.
I'd like to take this opportunity to again thank all those who have let me use their images. Not all of them have made it into the first release, but several hundred more should make it into the next release and the one after that.
When playing the game, users can press 'C' on the keyboard at any time to see the copyright details for images and music in that scene. Original sources are also listed in the game title screens.
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