Inquest Magazine illustrations

(click on image to enlarge)

I was cleaning out some old files today and stumbled upon these four illustrations. These were done for Inquest gaming magazine for a feature called "What If? Far Side of Magic" back in 2002. Basically I was asked to illustrate the Inquest staff's ideas for their own Magic the Gathering gaming cards. The image above has the original rough sketches that I sent in for approval on the left, on the right you will see I had to make a few changes for the final illustrations.

Here is a list of the descriptions I was given when I was asked to do the illustrations:

1. There’s a card called Thriss, Nantuko Primus (I’ll send it to you). This is a powerful praying mantiss type creature. We’re turning it into: Priss, Nantuko Crossdresser. Illo has a Thriss-like creature wearing pink ballerina dress, lipstick, a purse etc... looking very feminine.

2. There’s a card called Border Patrol (I could send it but it’s not a
useful reference). We’re turning it into: Mexican Border Patrol. Illo has
two guys in sombreros sleeping next to a fence, wall or gate of some kind. A huge dragon is walking right by.

3. There are several cards depicting a class of creatures called Treefolk. They’re big humanoid trees (I have a great reference I can send). Our card is Inbred Treefolk. Illo has two of these tree creatures wearing ratty overalls, buck teeth, one has a banjo, etc… Basically treefolk meets hillbillies.

4. There’s a card called Nantuko Monastery. Our take on it is called Nantuko Mensroom. Illo is of three bathroom stalls with only the feet of the creatures visible. One set of feet belongs to an elephant, one to a skeleton and one to a Cephalid (I’ll send a reference but basically a four-tentacled squid). There’s some graffiti on the outside of the stalls but on the door of the middle stall there’s a big red circle with a line through the middle (the international road symbol for prohibited) with the word Spelljacking in the middle.

These illustrations were really fun for me to do. Since I have never really been much of a painter, I decided that I would do very tight pencil renderings of the images and then simulate a "painted" look by coloring them in Photoshop. I think that the look and feel of these illustrations came out very unique and was able to pass as an actual illustration used for these gaming cards.

Unfortunately, this ended up being one of the last jobs I did for Wizard Magazine (and their sister publications), before I moved on to pursue my short career in Law Enforcement full time.

Enjoy,

Jack