Dinosaur Boulevard, 1990 oil on canvas mounted to panel, 52 X 24 published in Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time. Two paintings by James Gurney: Attack on a Convoy, 1994 oil on board, 29 X 14 published in Dinotopia: The World Beneath. The series was an amazing success, selling in the millions. To create a built-in audience, the publisher decided to break up the story, releasing five-chapter books over the course of two years prior to the launch of the lavish field guide. Initially conceived as a 500-page book, the project shifted gears. “I said that I’d really love to work on the field guide that I’d made as a kid.” The publisher embraced DiTerlizzi’s vision and together with co-writer Holly Black, the collaborative project took flight. “There was a lot of buzz and the publisher was really excited, asking me what my dream project would be,” reflects the artist. “It was a great training ground.” The artist went on to illustrate three books for Simon & Schuster, one of which won a Caldecott honor. “Looking back, it was a huge influence, as the games were all about world-building–soup to nuts,” shares DiTerlizzi. He was also an active player of Dungeons & Dragons, a fantasy role-playing game that he later illustrated. “When I was twelve years old, I spent the summer creating this field guide.” Growing up, DiTerlizzi was drawn to other worlds like George Lucas’s Star Wars and Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal. There are these giant man-eating flowers and the insects are three to four feet long,” he jokes. “I grew up in South Florida and always loved the flora and fauna. This was not only helpful for the US edition, but for the translation of the foreign editions as well.įor author and illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, a childhood obsession transformed into a series for young readers known as The Spiderwick Chronicles. Constructed in Adobe Photoshop, all design aspects including art, sketches and captions were on individual layers for ease of editing the numerous small texts. DiTerlizzi created a highly-detailed book dummy for the 120-page Spiderwick field guide. Two illustrations from Authur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You: Old-World Leprechaun and Caribbean Sea-Mai. The success spun three sequel works, each divulging more about this amazing world where dinosaurs work in a symbiotic relationship with humans. Taking two years to realize, Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time sold in 32 countries worldwide and was published in 18 languages. “The realistically painted scenes each had something impossible in them, like people riding on dinosaurs or a city right in the middle of a waterfall.” With the assistance of Ian Ballantine, the prints led to a 160-page picture book targeted to adults. “I wanted to make the impossible look almost inevitable,” he says. Such encounters inspired the artist to create a series of seven limited-edition prints of brilliantly detailed, fantastical cities. “At the end of the day, I’d sit around the campfire with these experts and talk about the dream of finding lost worlds,” recalls Gurney. Mostly self-taught, the artist worked as a freelance illustrator for National Geographic where he spent time on location with archaeologists, paleontologists and other scientists. After high school, he went on to major in archaeology, studying the remains of past civilizations. As a child, illustrator and author James Gurney was enamored by the classic tales of Robert Louis Stevenson and Jules Verne and loved building model ships and flying machines. In the heart, an amazing adventure lays dormant, waiting for the right time, when all the pieces are in place, for the dream to come to fruition. With every encounter, observation and experience, the tale becomes richer with a more expansive intellect from which to draw. It begins at childhood and develops gradually over time. Inside us all there is a story just waiting to be told.
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