Good points and good questions. Can you imagine the Addams Family done with photos of the actors? Or Twilight Zone with photoshopped stills from the series? If you think about it, the most successful machines in the history of pinball had hand drawn art on them.

I would really like to see the return of hand drawn artwork like Jurassic Park, Baywatch or Lethal Weapon. The beautiful designs like Medieval Madness, Champion Pub, Cirqus Voltaire. The current trend of "photoshop hell" as some call it should be broken with as soon as possible. That's all my humble opinion though.

I'm not sure how licensing fits into all of this. I don't think poor photoshopping is a requirement of the license. I'm pretty sure it's cheaper.