Interview: Thomas Elliott on His Dark Universe 'ESKATON' and its Upcoming Artbook
- 1 hour ago
- 7 min read
July 7th 2026
Illustrator Thomas Elliott has worked on huge franchises, including Warhammer and Doom, using his talent to contribute to existing worlds. However, he has also been creating a dark universe of his own called ESKATON, crafting factions and lore alongside his incredible artwork.
After years of sharing art online, Thomas is releasing a 250-page artbook through Kickstarter with Mindworks and designer Spiridon. The good news is that ESKATON launched today and can be backed right now! To share more about the book, Thomas was kind enough to speak with me about the exciting new volume and how it all began. Check out the interview below with his art and visit the Kickstarter here - ESKATON - An Art Book by Thomas Elliott.
Hi Thomas, thanks for speaking to me about ESKATON! You have been sharing artwork online for your grim universe for some time, but now it’s getting the artbook treatment. How are you feeling now that it will soon be in people’s hands?
Thomas Elliott - Hi! Thank you for having me here. I am very excited to finally be sharing ESKATON with the world officially. Holding a gorgeous book in your hands is a very different experience to viewing something online and I am proud, excited, and a little nervous, to see what people make of it.
Your war-filled universe is more than a collection of random illustrations and sketches, so for the uninitiated, could you let people know what ESKATON is?
TE - ESKATON is a dark science fiction setting of my own making, complete with lore, history, and art. The premise is that humanity has been forced to colonise the stars to escape an Earth that can no longer support life. It is about how we will go to any length to survive and the horrific implications of adapting to worlds not our own. Each world has its own stories, cultures, and visual styles, as the people who landed there have developed differently. Far from being an idyllic story of space exploration, technology in Eskaton has plateaued, space travel is imperfect and we have taken our problems with us to the stars. It takes centuries to reach nearby planets and in the void, humanity becomes alien to itself.
What was the origin and goal behind ESKATON, and has that changed at all as you’ve continued to build it?
TE - ESKATON has definitely evolved a lot over the years as I've added to it. The original seed for ESKATON was that I wanted to paint sci-fi battle scenes, but didn’t want to simply be making Warhammer 40k fan art. I realised pretty quickly that making my own battle scenes would be a lot easier if I had pre-established characters and factions I could pick and choose from. Out of that, the broad strokes of what would become the Magna Guard and Deformants were born. However, as the setting has deepened and I've given more thought to why the characters are the way they are ESKATON has become something of a reflection on modern life. Existence through unsustainable growth is a reoccurring theme within the book and how we, as a species, are infinitely better at responding to problems than preventing them. I find myself reflecting on contemporary life on this planet and expressing it in its fullest extent in the context of ESKATON.
The book is launching on Kickstarter on July 7th, allowing fans to back the project and secure a copy for their collection. What was your approach to the book and what can fans of your work expect to find inside?
TE - I want fans to live in the universe of ESKATON and experience it in the same way I have all these years! Everything to do with the book has been with this in mind. I don’t have the budget for a big Hollywood film, but making an immersive art book is next best thing. Within the book there are hundreds of illustrations, most of them traditional, tonnes of lore, and nearly a dozen short stories to bring it to life in peoples imaginations.
That sounds like a great mix of content to get lost in your universe. Is there anything inside of the book that you are most proud of, or are most excited for people to discover?
TE - There is so much about the book I am proud of. The artwork is amongst the best I've produced in my career so far, and the fact so much of it is traditional ink and oil paintings makes it more so. As I mentioned, there is so much more to ESKATON than just the surface level visuals, the lore that ties everything together has been a labour of love and I am proud and excited to see what people make of that in particular.
Please tell us about the cover art, because it jumped out for me with its classic movie poster look that isn’t often seen on artbooks!
TE - You've hit the nail on the head! Old school sci-fi films like Flash Gordon and the original Star Wars films have been a huge inspiration over the years. You cant go near those films without seeing the art of Drew Struzan, and he was one of the reasons I wanted to pursue a career in art. ESKATON wouldn’t exist without these influences, so I felt it would be cool to give a nod to its heritage on the cover itself.
Your work combines dark realism with otherworldly designs that are easy to get lost in, as seen in the many sketches and illustration you have posted for ESKATON. How did you develop your style and what were your influences?
TE - My work has a lot of influences, there is a big chunk of Warhammer 40,000 in there, which is appropriate as I worked in-house for Warhammer for 6 years. The artwork of Paul Dainton, Adrian Smith, and Karl Kopinski are a constant source of inspiration. I feel it is important to mix in real world influences as well and I try and take as much inspiration as possible from things that have actually existed. I have a huge collection of black and white war photos and I am always scouring books and the internet for interesting reference, whether that be unusual military vehicles, creative landscape photography, or bizarre historical clothing. Something I've been particularly enjoying recently is taking the design ques and ‘attitude’ of something, and creating something original that has the same vibe, turning an Apache Attack Helicopter into a mecha for instance. By keeping things linked to the real world, you don’t get too caught up in artistic trends and keep that thread of realism to your work.
Making books a reality isn’t always easy, did anything stand out or surprise you when working on the artbook?
TE - Curating the book as a whole was something I wasn’t expecting to be such a challenge. By the time I was writing the final drafts of the lore, there was nearly 50,000 words! Particular bits of text have to go with particular pictures and you want to go into detail on things, but also keep it clear how that detail fits into the bigger picture. Balancing all of this was surprisingly difficult and something I wasn’t expecting.
ESKATON is a book that follows years of hard work and I’m sure people are curious to know, is this the final culmination before moving on, or if there will be more to share in the future?
TE - ESKATON is just the beginning! Now that I have established the setting I want to keep adding to it for the rest of my life. This particular book devotes a lot of time to the events of one particular planet, the toxic death world of Neo Plasia. I will continue to produce art and lore exploring different corners of this universe, how humanity survived, changed, and how we’ve inevitably screwed things up in the process. There will definitely be plenty more to share and I would love to do it in the form of semi-regular art books.
To end the interview, let people know why they should support the Kickstarter on July 7th, as well as promoting anything else you have going on.
TE - If you love art, you love books, you love Sci-Fi, back the Kickstarter. If you’ve ever enjoyed anything about Warhammer there will something in ESKATON for you, there are illustrations of epic battle scenes, grotesque monsters, and sweeping panoramas, along with tonnes of lore to sink your teeth into and stories to get lost in. Whether you appreciate art or are looking for your next sci-fi hyper fixation, it's all here.
On a personal note this will be my first crowdfunded art book, so it would be a mind-blowing experience for it to do well which would make doing future books possible. We are living in a time where living artists are being marginalised in preference for digitally created AI art (very dystopian, maybe this needs to be explored in ESKATON!) This is an opportunity to show the world that living art is valuable and worth supporting.
As well as the standard book we will have available signed copies of the book with a drawings done by myself on the front page. Also there will be prints, 75mm miniatures of ESKATON characters, and original paintings available as part of the campaign. Check out the page and I hope you will think of supporting this unique project.
Thanks to Thomas Elliott for taking the time to speak with me about ESKATON and sharing the images seen above. Thomas mentioned AI, which is something that is encroaching on the opportunities for artists, so I've long thought that artist driven worlds would become popular in the artbook space, and ESKATON is perfectly suited to be one of them.
You can find Thomas' socials below, as well as the Kickstarter campaign page, which you can support to secure a copy of the book for your own collection!
Kickstarter - ESKATON - An Art Book by Thomas Elliott
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