Inspiration

[Baltimore Aureole]

The most-amazing source of Myst inspiration I know of is Mystic Placeshttp://mysticplaces.tumblr.com/.

Shoomlah (Claire Hummel) has collected so many wonderful Myst-like pictures from all over. You can tell she is a real Myst fan!
You can't leave her website without ideas for new Ages!

[Emor D'ni Lap]

Thanks, B.A. - I could not agree more! Ms. Hummel's clearly a dedicated Myst fan who knows her stuff visually. I wish she would become an Agebuilder herself!

Part of the whole Myst mystique is what seems to be an innate human fascination with decay: the mystery of implied histories, stories that may never be told but which we might tease out of the rubble - if we explorers are skilled and inquisitive enough!

Entire books have been written about this fascination, which I think should have a name of its own. Artificial ruins (paper on this topic) have been built all over the globe in order to create this sense of mystery.
(one example, in a panoramic tour format that gamers should feel comfortable with)

There are websites dedicated to images of decay, though most focus on relatively modern urban environments: Forbidden Places, Opacity, etc.

And Flickr hosts several photographic groups of this sort, such as DKP Group and RotSquad...or you can run through all such groups ...an enormous visual inventory of rust and rubble!

Update 2018: And next year there's even going to be a conference on the topic! http://aesthetics.decay.lcir.co.uk/

And another update 2020: Reddit group Abandoned Porn (no, it's NOT Porn that's been abandoned - it's totally Safe For Work! :^)

[Emor D'ni Lap]

There's always a lot of controversy among artists regarding how much you should absorb of the work of others in your field. Some painters refuse to see the work of their peers lest they be influenced and then be accused of imitation. Sometimes artists will only partake of the work of others who are not closely aligned with their own interests: for instance, some jazz musicians will only listen to classical and pop music.

So I'm hesitant to make this post for many reasons. (Another is that some of the work of these artists is so %#!&@*!! good that it's depressing to know I have so far to go before achieving their level...if ever.)

Nevertheless, this recent gallery show at the Gnomon School features an impressive list of current designers & visionaries for computer games, along with a convenient list of their personal websites.
In the hope that these brilliant examples will only serve to inspire the creation and execution of our own visions, I pass that list along here:

• Dylan Cole
• Neville Page
• James Clyne
• Izzy Medrano
• Vitaly Bulgarov
• Alex Nice
• Peter Konig
• Ryan Calloway
• Gavriil Klimov
• Dominic Qwek

Edit 7/22/2015: main link updated

[Emor D'ni Lap]

This site may be a source from which Ryan Miller is drawing inspiration for an upcoming project.
Or, it may be a repository for images to serve as inspiration for others working on that project.
Or it may be none of the above.

http://nestingdollsimages.tumblr.com/archive

7/2016: Content has been removed from the site; no longer active.
Internet Archives' Wayback Machine has archived only the first of five pages from the abandoned site: https://web.archive.org/web/201508120011...lr.com:80/...and from that page, the thumbnails' URLs go nowhere

[Baltimore Aureole]

See if you don't find the photography of Mr. Stephen Oachs to be very much like D'ni-ish. I do.

http://www.stephenoachs.com/gallery-landscape.php

[Baltimore Aureole]

Another one I saw, not D'ni but you might like:
http://themindcircle.com/french-church-r...-whispers/

[Emor D'ni Lap]

Here's a Flickr group dedicated to MYST-like imagery:
https://www.flickr.com/groups/myst-like/

Lots of good ideas!