I want to tell you a story about monkeys, pirates and deep serendipity because I think that this forum is probably the only place on the web that might appreciate this tale.
A few months ago I starter organizing a marketing event. It has really nothing to do with games but its name is “SeriousMonkey” and the word “monkey” is there just for fun and completely unrelated to “Monkey Island” or to real monkeys.
I asked for the help of Daniel Di Pietro, who is a great designer and a good friend. Its job was to design the logo of the event, the official website and the overall look and feel of all the graphics, both online and offline.
Daniel provided a first image, which was something like this:
Now, don’t get me wrong, I love minimal art and Daniel’s flat style. I think that the logo is awesome, but compared to his past works the result felt slightly uninspired: he’s usually very creative and beside the monkey I was expecting something more.
Anyway, I announced on my Facebook profile page the event and I posted an image similar to the one you see above and then it happened: somebody in the comments mentioned that the monkey reminded him of “The Secret of Monkey Island” and that was enough for Daniel to fully switch on his creativeness. And he started to create this thing:
… and then this thing:
… and this one:
… and this one as well:
… oh, and this too:
To sum it up, within just a few days I had in my hands not just a marketing event to organize but a marketing event inexplicably involving pirates! This decision was 100% Daniel’s, I had nothing to do with it but being it an extremely informal event I decided to go full ahead and to further highlight the association with pirates during the evening party that I was also organizing between the two days of the convention.
Now I had in my hands both a pirate-inspired convention and a pirate-inspired evening party! So, all the following things happened:
It has been a great night 
and my thoughts went to this forum and its members: I couldn’t wait to show you the pictures of this completely unwanted result! 
Daniel has told me that while he was drawing the pirates, his idea was to create something potentially suitable for a game. So if some of you want to ask him about his services, you can see his gallery and contact him through this page.
Things to do before I die:
Organizing a pirate event: CHECK! 
Cheers! 
Ever. 
Also, I’m quite positive that those $44/month wouldn’t be enough to pay Daniel, being $44 just the drawing cost of the left arm of the hairy shipboy shown above.