Basic Fantasy RPG Forums

So, I'm putting the finishing touches to my supplement and have some gaps in the layout that it would be nice to fill with some pictures. Can anyone recommend any good sources of royalty-free fantasy-style artwork?

Just some quick links I came up with. First, there's Wikipedia's Wikimedia, which collects public domain images:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

(This is searchable, so for 'medieval diagrams,' this page pops up: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Medieval_diagram, which has a lot of cool stuff.)

Here's the International Center of Medieval Art digital collections page. I haven't checked out these archives or whether the images may be used for free, but it's a place to start. If nothing else, there should be a lot of inspiration here.

http://medievalart.org/?page_id=192

Here's a mega-list of medieval manuscripts on the net. Again, I don't know if the sites they link to offer their images for free, but some might.

http://www.chd.dk/gui/index.html

That's what I have this morning. It would be great if anyone who checked any of these out would post updates on what they checked and whether the sites offered free art or not.

Sorry Joe. I have to get top dollar for my stick figure artwork. Sorry that struck me as funny. If I was an artis I would galdly let you some. I am looking forward to your supplement.

jackel wrote:Sorry Joe. I have to get top dollar for my stick figure artwork. Sorry that struck me as funny. If I was an artis I would galdly let you some. I am looking forward to your supplement.

LOL - reading it back, I didn't phrase my my original post very well did I? I really just meant artwork with which I wouldn't fall foul of copyright issues.

Anyway, thanks for the offer jackel and thanks also for Sir Bedivere's suggestions. I started with Wikimedia, and that led me to the Open Clip Art Library (http://www.openclipart.org). I actually found everything I needed there. There wasn't masses of fantasy type stuff, but what there was was rather good. I suspect the images I selected are probably rather well used, but I'm happy with them.

I also had a quick look at the SB's more academic medieval sites, but to be honest I got rather bogged down with them. A lot of them seemed to be photos rather than line art, and certainly some of the images are copyrighted. I really didn't spend very long looking though, and there might be treasures tucked away in there.

I'd still be interested to hear if anyone has any other suggestions. In this way we could build up a nice list of art sources for BFRPG's legion of supplement writers.

Cool. I'll have to check out the Open Clip Art site. It would be pretty useful to have a thread dedicated to linking free art we could use.

On the medieval art, if the images are public domain, you can run them through a Photoshop / GIMP filter and turn them into line art.

There's some really super links there - I must investigate!

Sometimes there's some very cheap one-off payment stock art on DriveThru
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/index.php ... 0_0_2890_0
-occasionally there's the odd free piece. Also you can email some of the artists/companies directly and beg-for-creditted-favours, I guess. The nice thing about anyone you chat to on there is that they're all very alert to stock-art and copyright arrangements, so misunderstandings are less likely to occur. Also, every other person a small time publisher, so they may have pointers.

I keep thinking about getting involved in stock art trade (I have some very rough paragraph-filler art) but I'm not sure I'm up to the right level of quality and besides my figure drawing sucks a bit. Also I feel guilty about selling art when I keep promising fans that my next product will be more floor plans. Hmm, I think I also need to read up on the creative-commons licenses...

Lots of amateur artists on Deviant Art (there's also stock sections)
http://deviantart.com
(my page is in my signature)

Also there's this board on Dragonsfoot http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewf ... b22cb44e44 (art and miniatures)

Sorry if I've said anything obvious. Good luck with the supplement.

These were in a free product on RPGDriveThru
http://aterribleidea.com/108-terrible-c ... s-gallery/
Free character head shots.