More Posters!

I wasn't sure what to put here, but then I realized some people might be interested in the process of creating some digital ephemera like this, so I decided to document some of the process here. This process isn't exclusive to making fake posters and could be used for any kind of digital ephemera, but for the sake of this tutorial, I'm assuming you're making a poster.

Start with an idea, what do you want to communicate? Could be as simple as, "I need some cool posters for background decoration." Could  even be, "I want something that appears throwaway, but in actuality foreshadows events later on in my game." figure out what you want.

Honestly though, you could start with an image or really anything. But having a solid foundation is key.

Next it needs a  name. it can be something meaningful, can be something random. It's all your preference. For meaningful names, I suggest relying on the research you've already been doing for your project. For further inspiration on that Wikipedia is a good place, or really anywhere. For people names I suggest https://www.behindthename.com/

If just any name will do, there are tons of random generators out there. My personal favorite though is https://www.fantasynamegenerators.com/ because of the sheer variety. It's an amazing starting point for coming up with a name.

With random names, it's a good idea to give the name some meaning within your piece. What does the name mean? What does it evoke? But it's still okay if it's just a name.

Once you are ready, it's time to make some posters. And by make posters, I mean find some images.

There are two royalty-free image sites I strongly recommend: 

https://unsplash.com/ Great for actual photographs and possibly textures.
https://pixabay.com/ This one is more of a mixed bag full of photos, illustrations, cg, and clip art.
While both sites state that their content can be used for anything, some photos & images may contain copyright material (like a photo of a Marvel toy), so just be careful (though for the most part it's all good).

Oh! And if you need faces, https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ is a great source for ai-generated faces.
NOTE: WHILE I HAVE DONE EXTENSIVE RESEARCH IN TRYING TO FIND THE ANSWER, I AM STILL NOT 100% CERTAIN IF THE IMAGES CREATED BY THIS SITE HAVE ANY KIND OF COPYRIGHT OR USAGE RESTRICTIONS ON THEM. WHAT I HAVE SEEN LEANS MORE TOWARDS "they are probably okay to use maybe" THAN HAVING ANY HARD RESTRICTIONS ON THEM. IF ANYONE KNOWS MORE LET ME KNOW.

Find whatever you need and once you have those, head to your image editor of choice and- oh, you don't have an image editor?

That's no problem at all. If you're needing something that isn't Photoshop, I recommend Affinity, though it's paid. There are also quite a few free options (that aren't scammy I think). The one I recommend is https://pixlr.com/ It's where I did this image of Palpatine as a sphinx cat:

Once you got everything together in your editor of choice, play around and make it!

After you've made it, save it as a PNG or whatever format you need and import it into whatever game engine you're using and set it up however you need.

Congrats! You're making environment art.