Art Previews

Here's a preview of a particular morph (body) in EP -- the bouncer. Bouncers are adapted for microgravity environments, so they are more limber and have prehensile toes for grabbing things with their feet. This picture actually shows a bouncer in a gravity environment, using their feet to hold on. This piece is by Daniel Clarke, who's doing a bunch of our other sample character/morph pieces. (Click for bigger version.)

This piece by Bruno Werneck shows a swarm of Scum ships. The Scum are a faction of nomads with a strong libertarian streak and a fascination with body modifications. Scum barges are large colony ships that have been retasked as wandering black markets, traveling from habitat to habitat. They are typically accompanied by a swarm of smaller spacecraft. Click for a larger version.

Here's a piece from Bruno Werneck, illustrating a scene from a ruined Earth. This was originally done black & white and then colorized after we made the switch to full color. Clickie clickie for a bigger size.

Combat in zero-gravity situations can be pretty messy, as any spilled blood or other fluids tend to float around and get all over everything. This piece, by artist John Gravato, illustrates such a scenario.

This illustration from Alex Eckman-Lawn shows the interior of an O’Neill cylinder habitat. If you’re unfamiliar with how these large space habitats works, it might seem confusing, but it’s actually pretty fascinating. The hab is a hollow cylinder, sort of like a soda can, spun along its long axis. This provides gravity to the human settlements that are on the interior, on the curving walls. On the inside, there is no horizon because the walls rise up on either side above you, meeting overhead. Parts of the cylinder are windows, allowing solar light into the interior as it rotates. The interior landscape would be sculpted, allowing for “rural” recreational areas and crop growth in addition to urban settlements

In Eclipse Phase, after the Fall of Earth, Mars holds the largest population of transhumans. Mars also suffered during the Fall, however, with many former settlements left in ruins.

This illustration from Alex Eckman-Lawn shows some figures exploring those ruins, with a large surviving dome habitat looming in the background.

The Exhumans are an NPC faction in Eclipse Phase that take self-modification to the extreme. They seek to become posthuman, or more accurately, something altogether different and better than human. Some of them tinker with extreme genetic mods while others pursue cognitive alterations that radically alter their mindset. Though individual Exhumans pursue different ideals, they are generally hostile to transhumanity, considering them backwards and primitive.

This particular illustration is from Davi Blight.

Assigning illustrations for purely digital entities is never easy. While things in virtual environments can pretty much look like anything, especially given the hyper-real capabilities of digital imaging in Eclipse Phase, you run the risk of having something that looks completely out of place if you don’t include some context. Unfortunately the way to provide context is usually to provide some sort of obviously digital environmental element, even though such things would be unlikely in actual virtual spaces. Dug Nation pulled this illustration off admirably, showcasing an infomorph, a digital emulation of someone’s mind. The split-off faces could be taken to represent the process of forking, or making (usually limited) copies of yourself.

Artist Dug Nation illustrated this piece for the Mesh chapter of the Eclipse Phase core book. The Mesh is the internet of the future — wireless, decentralized, and self-healing. This character (in a body adapted to zero-G, as he’s using his toes) is handling a security breach through an augmented reality interface.

This illustration by Davi Blight features an unfortunate individual who has wandered into a cloud of flesh-eating nanites. The lighter-than-air nanites can stay suspended for hour hours depending on air conditions, or they may have been released as part of some defensive system trap.

Personally, I think this picture also looks good tilted 90 degrees, and placing the character in a weightless environment.