Can BroQuest be made without Shwig's art?

A lot of the controversy surrounding the old development of this game revolves around its almost sole artist (I know others worked on it, but Shwig is known as the "face" of Broquest)

Well, he's clearly moved on and has expressed disinterest in both returning and people using his art/altering or recoloring it (of which I am terribly guilty, but I don't really care much about that since I see the art as more of a way to convey an idea)

There's a lot of material out there, from professional to drawfag, that could be used. If we're going the non-profit route, we could really use any art we desired so long as we were graceful about it and credited the artist, and asked for permission where applicable.

But, the end point is this: Shwig's art is good and defined many of the core concepts of the characters, but do we really need to use it? Would it be stronger for the project if we abandoned the pre-conceived notions instilled in us by BroQuest's past artwork and pre-written lore and go forward to produce original content?

I feel that we should use it as a basis. Like not use redo his characters in a new artstyle.
But actually rework them. I honestly feel is art is too high quality not to take inspiration from.
My only concern is what to use and what no too. There is so much potential.

I have a fucking softspot for steampunk knight and NRFS though anything mecha or metal.

I think that, while it's wrong to base the ENTIRE game on his art, it's undeniably true that his art and designs were what inspired all the Broquest concept in the first place.
My idea was to use the Shwigs designs in the VN sections, and to let our artist imitate his style in other drawings (like the characters expressing emotions, eventual new stuff etc).
Also, Shwig has not yet said if he wants to take part to this project or not.
Before we even ASK, we should get the basic shit together. This means having a confirmed team, haivng a main plot confirmed, having said what characters/ideas/quests stay and what characters/ideas/quests go (Keeping them all will either require years or lead to failure).
AFTER we have decided these things we can try to contact again Shwig. If for whatever reason he's not aviable, we can change the "style" of the drawings, but using Shwig's art as a base.

Actually, our recent stirrings have caused him to voice his opinion on the matter:

http://shwlg.tumblr.com/

After reading that I'm quite glad we are remaking the art.
Nobody will give a shit because of HIS art? We'll see that.

I personally believe that most of the characters should keep their current design in Shwig's work, especially considering that a lot of the characters weren't even designed by him. We can probably use the current art as placeholder, but end goal should be to have all the character portraits redrawn in a new artstyle, that is visually distinctive from Shwig's work but still relates to it in some way so as not to throw off people who wanted the usual broquest character portraits in the game. That being said there's no reason why we couldn't touch up some characters and make them better.

He claims he designed and created the Paladin Girl and Suave Devil.

Perhaps, then, if he won't be aboard, we could simply replace them?

I for one like the concept of the Happy-Go-Lucky Paladin.

I am happy that we only need to take out to characters.
I feel that we need to have a vareity of more classes maybe we can look toward FF or something for more inspiration. Let's prove him wrong and make something fun!

We have to move on from Shwig if anyone is ever going to take it seriously.

I agree entirely with Canarmane.