space pope

Space Pope. Done for newest Eclipse Phase RPG

Battle Tech

General Baxter: House of Liao

Xenephobia

 

Drop Ship

Here are some pieces that I completed for a Battletech RPG recently.

Eclipse Phase: Gate Crashing

I got the opportunity to work with Rob Boyle on Eclipse Phase again.. I did three images for their first book, but only one chapter opening this time around.

It was a fun assignment, an I tried a new approach this time around.. One of my first commissions when I did everything digitally.. I got to spend some time on a friend's Cintiq, so I went from concept to final all in Photoshop.

Here's a quick overview of the plot of this RPG,

Gatecrashing takes you through the mysterious Pandora Gates:
* The 5 solar system gates and the factions that control them
* 30 extrasolar locations of interest to Firewall
* Exploration operations and hazards
* New morphs, new gear, and rules for gate use

Learn more here on the Eclipse Phase blog

here are some of my steps thru the process:

Here are the thumb nails that I sent out to the Art Director. I had more, but I felt these two were the
strongest. And unless I got direction to do something different, I wanted to go with these.

After the initial concepts were approved with some small notes on compotion, I started with a BW tonal painting.. I pushed and pulled the forms and toyed with the composition until I came to a final image that I liked.

This is on the way to the final image.. I played with the "Pandora's Gate" ( depicted at the bottom of the composition) I had it on a separate layer, so I could push pull and stretch it until I got a composition that I liked.

D&D Gamma World

I did this assignment early 2010 for Jon Schindehette at Wizards of the Coast.  When I first got the commission, I thought I was going to have a chance to create some really awesome and crazy looking weapons..

But as I got further into the assignment I realized that I was just going to draw pretty straightforward guns, and that's it..

But it was still fun, and my first assignment with Jon Schindehette.

I've included the rough step of the process I used for this assignment.. I started everything on paper, scanned it, and then added color and clean up with photoshop.. It was time consuming, but it gave me the level of polish that I was looking for.

Merchant of Venice

Not really.. But here's a commission for an RPG game.. This will be full color in the end.

RPG Illustration

Start of an illustration for an RPG Game

Last White Wolf.

I finished these illustrations sometime ago, but had to wait until the book was published. It's late and I don't feel like writing too much. Maybe I'll add more later..

More White Wolf

More from the same project.

White Wolf Stuff

I finished these illustrations sometime ago, but had to wait until the book was published. It's late and I don't feel like writing too much. Maybe I'll add more later..

ArtOrder B&W Vampires

Done for the weekly sketch contest over at ArtOrder. This weeks theme was as you can guess, a pen and ink image of two D&D vampires..

It's much too early in the morn for too much exposition, so I'll keep it short and sweet.. Maybe I'll add some colorful exposition after I arise.

OKAY... Got some sleep, and so far I'm starting off this week on a great foot.. Only good new trickling in right now..

How about some insight on this piece.. I feel like talking about it because it was a pretty long journey from conception to finish.. Time-wise I only took a day from idea to finish, but I went to a lot of different places creatively to get to the end goal.

I started with visions of Franklin Booth and Charles Dana Gibson, and even a little Heirich Kley. I knew that I wanted it to look real and very tangible, but from the beginning I knew I wouldn't be able to get a lotof good ref, even if shot some- which I did..

The thing with armor is that no matter what ref you shoot, you won't see most of th body and you're always making up stuff with armour, so you're aways creating without a safety net.

I thought about getting some scratchboard so I could do this right, but I didn't want to have to learn a new technique when the subject was already kicking my but.. So I started with just straight pen and ink .. And at first I started doing the "comic think" just tracing the outlines and adding shadows.. But I reminded myself that didn't want any outlines, and to just paint the shadows with the black.

Note that I did do a prelim thumbnail, but veeeeeery rough, of the shadow play.. While it didn't help with details, it helped me balance the distribution of light and dark.. I tried to match it with the thumbnail, because I could make out the thmbnail fairly easily, and I knew if the final matched, the composition would at least be taken care of.

At a point I was finished laying down the black, but I was very disappointed with the picture at this stage.. So i grabbed some Titanium White acrylic and started re-establishing some positive, white, areas.. The picture felt better, but the white was just too white.. So then i went back over it with some black lines, but much more delicate than before. BTW, painting on the acrylic white was easier than painting on the paper..

And for the rest of the illustration process I went back and forth between white and black.. sometimes painting over an area two or three times..

I made a mistake and overlooked the size specifications in the original assignment, so I had to add some background to the top and bottom.

Well. That's that.. hope this might help you if you try this technique.. I'm very interested in trying out scratchboard now.. But I have to say this process was pretty fun and organic.. I'd just like to find a more opaque paint other than acrylic.. I had to put down two or three layers to really cover up the black ink.( if anyone has some ideas, hit me up.)

CROM!!

Okay.. It's not Conan.. But I didn't have any better names. I did this for a call for B&W entries over at ArtOrder.

The process for this picture is a something new for me.. I very used to starting and finishing an illustration in Photoshop.. But usually for linework I always go with actuall pen and paper and then scan it.

I wanted to simulate a scratch board technique, ala Booth, but without having to actually use scratchboard.. So to begin this images I did a lot of getsture sketches, read blobs of black, and then painted white on top of them the pul out details. I did a lot of back and forth between the white and black and scraped quite a few concepts before coming to this one. Also, each character and the background are all on separate layers..

White Wolf: Wicked Dead.

More images from this project.

ArtOrder : Exchange Challenge

Done for the weekly sketch competition over at ArtOrder. This week I had to choose a silhoutte, not done by myself, from the competition two weeks ago, and fully flesh it out..

I chose the silhoutte by Dana Henderson. I really liked the gesture and movement of the figure I chose.. It was fun figuring out what should go where and trying to make everything come together.

So.. How do you vote?

1. Check out my illustration over at ArtOrder(this links to the exact page you need to go to).

2. Scroll to be bottom of the thread and post a comment something like this text " I'm ( your name) and I think Tariq did a bang-up job for this competition. I think he's a great guy and I vote for him hands down.".

4. Sit back and enjoy the euphoria of helping out a friend in need.

5. Repeat next week.

More White Wolf Malfeas

More images from the same project.