DoW: Art Decisions (Patreon)

If you've been a $10 backer for long enough, you'll remember the preview of Desecration of Wings. If not, read and enjoy! Today, I'd like to get your input on how the project should move forward in terms of art direction.

A little background first. Much of the work on this project is almost as old as TLS - early on, I thought I'd build trust in my ability to finish things by making a normal-sized RPG. But I've always kept it as second priority compared to my main games, so it has lingered in different forms for a very long time.

It's also been plagued by artist problems. I've had some artists run off with the money, others deliver substandard work, others do decent work but leave the project, and finally the most recent one didn't work out for reasons of professionalism. I'm getting tired of this and I want to finish and release this game, so it will be my focus during this break.

However, I can't afford to throw away the artwork that I've commissioned. And much of it is good, see the above example. The question now is: how much should I prioritize art consistency?

Now, in an ideal world I'd like everything to be wholly consistent, no question about that. And I would only consider artists I felt were somewhat close to the style we already have. But I want to gather opinions from you guys about how important it is to you that I find artists who can copy a given style exactly, and how much range of styles people consider acceptable. Copying the exact style means the final version of the game comes out much slower.

Unfortunately, the way this break has gone I haven't really been able to relax at all or spend time on DoW. However, I intend to finish my end, so all of you $10 backers should get to play the full game this month - it will just have text-only scenes until the art situation is figured out. 

So yeah, let me know your thoughts on this and we'll see if I can't finally finish this project.

UPDATE

I tried to categorize responses into "less important", "somewhat important", and "very important" and they ended up a nearly even spread. That's including some responses via DM.

So there's really no dominant response. Not entirely sure what to make of that, but in the short term it means I will likely defer this decision. I do want to respond to a few things in a general way:

 - All the characters portraits and expressions are complete and done by one artist.

 - Four of the game's CGs are completely done in a consistent style, though one of these needs serious fixing. 

 - I am reluctant to throw away all the money I invested in those CGs, though I can if that's what's necessary for the game to look professional in the end.