If your forum is animanga, the images you use across the board should also probably stay true to animanga! Seeing photography can be a little jarring, and take viewers out of the element of the site. If you're struggling enough that it's not worth it to find images that match the faces of your site, I wouldn't say it's a major deal to dabble into the other (it may be off putting, but it definitely shouldn't be anyone's make or break). I'd say the only absolute no-no would be mixing animanga art and photography, unless your site accommodates both real life and animanga faces.

Finding board images is a huge pain the butt, but Zerochan has an okay selection is you sort by general thematic tags, or just browse the general 'original' tag long enough. Otherwise, though, I'm curious what other people use because... IT IS... A STRUGGLE...

Scenery, No People - helps in a pinch but you'll still definitely be looking through, but that's to be expected. A little cheat I picked up quite some time ago.

I'm going to be real for a second: I don't typically use images myself. Mostly because I have a need for everything to be uniform, so finding images for ooc boards would ultimately be an inconvenience. Mad respect to folks who do though. As stated before: it all relies on the site that you form. Board wise, it's nice to keep things uniform. But if people want a thorough explanation of things, I don't see what it'd hurt linking real life based images as a reference to the setup. After all, the art world won't always have exactly what you're looking for in regards to reference (unless you can draw it yourself, then kudos to you.) But otherwise, word-based descriptions don't hurt either! Don't forget most of our jobs as roleplayers rely on word-based description.

Thank you for the input so far everyone c:
The skin I'm using thankfully doesn't have forum images for ooc forums -- only the rp boards so that makes finding those images much easier (cause i feel the same - finding images for EVERY forum is EXHAUSTING). It also has descriptions so I think the two together will be :chefkiss: c:

I'll definitely check out zerochan. I kind of forget it exists cause usually my go-to is trying to find specific images through google or pinterest.

Since we are animanga faces, I'll definitely try to stick to that genre. Thank you again folks <3

hello, hello!

:^) im just here to chime in with how i look for images in case it helps anyone! b/c i tend to have too many options when it comes to images thanks to my hoarding ways.

zc can be a good jumpoff point, usually, i search for like 'scenery', 'landscape' or like specific themes like 'futuristic' to lower my results! if i really like the style, i'll probably look @ the pivix account for the person!

i also use tags 'scenery', 'background', etc on pivix! there's more of a selection there, if you don't mind digging through it!

oh! and sometimes, depending on the genre of the site, concept art of video games can be a good jump-off point! especially if they released art books and such since there's so much material there.