JP Targete

JP is an accomplished digital and traditional illustrator, concept artist and Art Director for books and Video games. JP attended the school of visual arts in New York on a full scholarship. While still in school he quickly started working professionally at the age of 20 illustrating book covers for Avon Books using traditional mediums mostly oil paints. In 1989 he graduated with a BFA in Illustration, after a short time illustrating young adult books and Romance covers JP got his big break illustrating sci-fi and fantasy book covers for Berkeley/Ace books, and soon after for Bantam books, Warner books Eos and Tor. He continued to do work for Wizards of the Coast, The Science Fiction Book Club and many RPG companies.

JP's work has been published in Spectrum (the best of contemporary Fantastic Art), on collectible plates from the Bradford Exchange, made into puzzles for the toy/game company Ceaco. JP also won the 2000 A.S.f.A Chesley award for best paperback book cover and has been nominated a few times over the years. In 2003 Paper Tiger published a book of his art entitled: "Illumina the Art of JP Targete" which featured many of his book illustrations and insights to his experiences and life as an illustrator.

A few years ago he decided to try his hand at concept art and landed a job with NCsoft, lead makers of massive multi-player online games. Parallel to his illustration career JP's passion and creativity made a huge impact at Ncsoft. That same year he became Art director at the NCsoft Santa Monica Studios in California where he worked on concepts and Art directed creature and environment art production for upcoming games such as Tabula Rasa and Aion. JP has also worked with a number of production companies like Villians and Nexus productions.

Currently as of December 2007 JP is working as Lead concept artist for Gentle Giant Studios.