What's in your art inspiration file?

The one thing that makes me very happy with LPJ Design and what we do is all the comments we get about the quality of the artwork we do for our products. I always get a lot of questions of who does my art (Sorry if I don't respond to those, It took me a long time to find these guys and I don't like sharing them), how much do I pay them (What I can afford to pay them) and the other question I get the most is where do I come up with the description of the artwork I want?  I always answer that one the same, It depends on what I have in my art inspiration files.  Then people ask the the scariest question I ever hear when dealing with artwork: Whats are art inspiration files?

Even though I am a graphic & web design with 20 years of experience, I CAN NOT DRAW AT ALL. Not a lick.  But I do like GOOD artwork and I know what I would like to see in my products.  So what I do is go to DeviantArt and search the word "Paizo". Then I start lookinf through all that artwork for pieces I like. If I find artwork a like or would like to use in a product (if I could) and might be able to use later, I save it to a file on my computer.  I keep doing this for about 30 to 45 minutes and go though as much artwork as I can.  I do this one a week.  Now my art inspiration file is over 800 images just for the NeoExodus: A House Divided products.

Then when I have a character design that I need a pull 5 to 10 images that I send to my artist with the line, "The character design I want you to draw should look like they exist in a world with these images I am sending you." and I let them go.  Let the artists do what they do best, be creative and draw!!! Stand out of their way and they will do better images then you even can imagine.  My motto: Let professional do professional work.If you need a specific image just give them a rough idea visually what you want, do what I told you to do and you will be VERY happy with the results.  Talk to you later...