As I started my project some months ago I was sure to do it without pictures. The reason is I am pretty much of a perfectionist and I just knew how much extra work it would cost me. I thought, if I use pictures, they need to be presented continuously in a certain style, in a fixed format. I ditched the idea.

A few days ago I tried to drew pictures in a easy style. I can draw pictures with pen and paper but I decided to try digital drawing with Gimp. I thought this style wouldn't effort too much time. The characters will only be drawn as shadows. I drew this:

Now using a digital tool gave me another idea to get fitting pictures.

Okay, I didn't drew it by myself. I looked up for pictures labeled as free to reuse! In this case it is a merge of three pictures and I drew their shadows. Then I ran a pixelizer filter and done. Using the pixel style opens the way to much more compatible pictures from the web. It can be photos, drawings or animations of any quality and they appear all in the same style.

I think it's a acceptable way to save time and to get a stylized presentation. Or if someone isn't trained in drawing. Using only shadows instead of detailed characters is still a good idea for my needs. It allows me to draw their shadows\stance by myself to get a picture fitting the story as much as possible.

Of course it don't need to be the pixel style. I played around and it is possible to get different kind of styles using this method. There are pencilizer, oil color, paperlike, etc. tools. Combined with cutting and merging pictures, image transformations and blend effects it's possible to get stylized sets of pictures for a game. I choose the pixel style because it gives me a nostalgic feeling from old console games.

Edit:
The source images in these examples are a real photos, a sketching, a oil painting and a animation.