My earlier talk of records and album cover artwork has inspired me crack open an old book that I’ve not looked at in some time. Upon opening it, I immediately saw that it was more influential than I realized.

I purchased Roger and Martyn Dean’s Magnetic Storm back in 1984 when I was 15 years old. I was blown away the dynamic, colorful dragons that adorned the book jacket (and the then-popular band, Asia’s album cover).

Now that I look at it, their designs most definitely influenced my creature designs in Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide, especially the colorful patterning.

More importantly though, I remember copying their totally cool hand-drawn-lettering. This element has become an integral part of my book-making philosophy to this day.

In our digital world of “Anything can become a font”, I have relished the fact that most of my books have hand-drawn titling - something I seriously first took notice of while copying images out of my copy of Magnetic Storm. Seriously, why wouldn’t the titling to a piece of art not come from the same mind-space, the same vision, the same hand, as the image it is meant to compliment?

Roger and Martyn have done many tomes on their various contributions to books, albums, conceptual art, and architecture. Give their site a look-see, and by all means check out one of their titles - I guarantee it will inspire you.

The older I get, the more I am convinced life is but a series of circular motions. But each time your orbit returns to a pivotal point in your life, your journey affects it in such a way that you now see things in a slightly different perspective. I swear. I don’t know…I am certainly no student of philosophy, but I can’t be the only one who thinks this.

Consider the CURIOUS and AMAZING interaction I have had with Dinotopia deity James Gurney. Actually he goes by Jim…I am not sure if he has any other nicknames like “Jimbo”, “J-Dog” or “The Gurnster…I’ll have to find out.

1992: I am 2 years away from art school graduation, and in the school library, I spy a tome which is wonderful to behold. Just like the time I found William Stout’s Dinosaurs in high school, once again the little boy in me is giddy with renderings of prehistoric pretties realistically rendered in a Jules Verne-esque world.

On top of that, I have the cursory knowledge to recognize the influence of Sir Alma Tadema (and perhaps a sliver of John Waterhouse?) combined with the observational design so prevalent in books by the late Dutch master, Rien Poortvliet. In short, the combination is somewhat familiar and comfy, while being presented in a completely new fashion. Not since Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s Faeries had I been so blown away by a book.

The idea alone was novel enough: turn-of-the-century father and son travelers explore an island inhabited by humans happily co-existing with civilized dinosaurs. But the combination of Jim’s quick oil-wash sketches contrasted against majestically realized vistas - not to mention his wonderful calligraphy, made this book an instant classic with kids and adults alike. And it certainly was in my mind when I designed Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide.

Many years later, I got to meet Jim at a picnic-party he was holding at his home in upstate New York. Michael Kaluta had invited me to join him on what was a bit of tradition among the Hudson Valley artists (like Stephen Hickman, Jeffrey Jones and Berni Wrightson) where there was food, music, and lots of art show-and-tell. Needless to say, I was seriously intimidated by that talent pool as we drove up from the city. However, all fears were washed away after I met Jim and all of his friends - they were a warm and inviting bunch.

From then on, Jim and I kept in touch either by phone or by mail. I’d send him my books for his library; he’d do the same with his later installments of Dinotopia. I even coerced him into supplying a blurb for Dinosaur Summer, a (now out of print) book I illustrated for Greg Bear. Here’s what Jim had to say:

“Tony DiTerlizzi has given a labor-of-love treatment to the artwork, with evocative illustrations throughout.”

Wow. A quote for me from a guy who redefined dinosaurs. I barely knew how to paint when I received this praise.

It gets better - earlier this year, Jim asked me to blurb his new Dinotopia book, Journey to Chandra. Here’s what I had to say:

“With lush settings reminiscent of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, colorful characters cast from Norman Rockwell, and vivacious dinosaurs conjured from the spirit of Charles Knight, Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara is a window into this modern master’s mind. Children and adults alike will enjoy exploring this rich world of Jurassic proportions.”

Yesterday, Ang, Sophia and I went to see Jim speak and sign at the Eric Carle museum. He and his wife, Jeanette, were so happy for all of our successes and our new family. I had to pause at one point and just soak in the moment - it was really cool.

See? Life + continual reoccurrences = Tony’s “Circles” theory! I can’t wait to see where it goes from here…

PS - Jim’s joined the blogosphere as well. Check it out!

Like I said before, both the original AD&D Monster Manual and the 1994’s Monstrous Manual had a tremendous impact on me both as an artist and a creator of books.

After binging out on D&D, at 13 I spent an entire summer making my own Monster Manual, which was more a field guide full of fantastical creatures from a strange island called “Gondwanaland” (after the ancient super-continent). But instead of giving statistics and game points, I wrote about natural habits, habitats, and even created scientific names for my menagerie.

I never forgot about that idea of a fantastical field guide from a naturalist’s point-of-view and that passion went into every image that I did for Spiderwick’s Field Guide - which was full of goblins, trolls, ogres and faeries - very much like the Monster Manuals.

I still love the Tolkien-inspired world of Dungeons & Dragons. And, even though I don’t do any illustrative work for the game anymore, I still doodle out some of my favorite monsters just like I did back in 1981.

The AD&D Monstrous Manual (MM) was my second monstrous assignment for TSR. I had just handed in the artwork for my first job, Dragon Mountain, and received a call from the MM editor Tim Beach.

It was 1992, I had just graduated from college, and was living with my parents. My younger brother, Adam, and my good friend Mike, had encouraged me to submit stuff to TSR and the Monstrous Manual was a dream-come-true project for me.

Adam and Mike had encouraged me because they had seen the drawings I had been doing in my sketchbook for the past year of Beholders, Shambling Mounds and Mind Flayers - some of which had been in my initial submission to TSR. So when Tim called me to see my interpretation on their classic creatures I simply just sent him my sketchbook.

At that point, he wanted me to illustrate the WHOLE book - over 300 illustrations! But the deadline was so tight there was no way I could do it, so we decided on half (which was still over 100 drawings!)

I had no money (I was still waiting for my payment from Dragon Mountain). So I used leftover school supplies consisting of pencils, Berol Prismacolor markers, and pastel pencils all rendered on laser paper. You read that right. Crappy, crummy, thin-n-flimsy laser bond paper. Of course, it works well for blending the alcohol ink for the markers, but it hardly will stand the test of time.

You can see some of my favorite finished images in the ART/GAMING section of the site. In the meantime, here are some snapshots of the sketchbook that I sent to Tim.

I realized that many readers may no longer have the aforementioned AD&D Monster Manual, don’t remember the art, or simply have never seen it. So, just to give an idea of how groovy it was, here are a few scans of some of my fav images from this book by artist David A. Trampier.

…of course, these images are © TSR/WotC/Hasbro.

It was a surreal moment for me to be able to get the opportunity to render some of these classic monsters for 1994’s Monstrous Manual, but I’ll yammer about that in the next post.

As a maker of books, I am a collector of books. Actually I am a collector of many things as you will soon see in future posts.I want to share books that have affected me in some way: either by art, story or otherwise. My hope is that it will inspire other young creative minds like me or, at least, give a clue to my influences.

After the last post, I thought of focusing on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. But I think I will save that one for later and, instead, hop to another book that had a tremendous impact on me: the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual.

First let me tell you that I did not own this book until about 10 years ago when I bought a used copy at a flea market in Brooklyn – its true. So how could this book have such an impact on me?

It is 1981, and a game craze has swept the nation. Next to the Rubik’s Cube and Atari 2600, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D for short) has all types of people rolling dice and casting spells before it recedes to a crowd of brainy intellectuals and geeky nerds. I am in 7th grade, and I fall under that latter category.

I attend Murray Middle School (we called it Murray Mental) and I still look like I am 9 years old even though I am 12. At this point in my life I love to draw, and have done so since I was very young – but so too have other kids, so I don’t think I am doing anything out of the ordinary.

One of my good pals, Rob, has all things D&D.

I have the basic boxed set – and that I have to share that with my younger brother and sister. Rob has all the hardcover books, even the Cthulhu version of Deities & Demigods.

I have notebook paper to create my characters on. Rob has pre-printed “official D&D player sheets”.

I have one adventure, “The Keep on the Borderlands”, that came with the boxed set, Rob has every adventure module you can think of and the little lead miniatures to boot.

But my favorite thing of all that Rob owned was the Monster Manual – an encyclopedia of all the D&D monsters. Immediately I loved the simple, high-school-student-folder-doodle pen & ink drawings of David Sutherland, Erol Otus and, (my fav of the bunch) David Trampier (or DAT, as he signed his art).

Trampier’s woodcut-like, tattoo-inspired graphic renditions of goblins, dragon turtles, lizard men and giants just blew me away. And I wanted to draw just like him. So I used a tried-n-true technique that all grade schoolers know, and asked, “Hey Rob, can I borrow this book tonight and bring it back to you tomorrow?”

Sure enough, he was cool about letting me take the sacred tome home where I meticulously copied as many of the images as I could before returning it. He also let me borrow it so that I could use the schools art dept. opaque projector to copy some of my favorites. In a time before copy machines, scanners and jpegs, this was the only way I could get a copy of some of these cool images for my own library. And I loved these drawings so much. I still have them to this day.

To say that this had an impact on my art and career would be an understatement. Next, I’ll ponder on just how much of an impact it truly had…