In 2007 I planned a black and white Film Noir point-and-click adventure. Sooner or later I found myself more attracted by pirate sprites. I looked at the illustrations of "Treasure Island" by Newell Convers Wyeth for inspiration, especially this and this one. The characters were fun to make, and  I liked the fact that they had more realistic proportions than the RPG Maker characters I was working on at the time, too.

Today, it reminds me of a piece by Stratus-Stereo, which I also like a lot.

Black, white, and transparency. Top row: pirate crew; bottom row: military, officials, villagers. Best viewed at 3x, I guess.