Like any artists, illustrators must choose where their work will “live” on the spectrum of styles and genres. Toni DiTerlizzi lives somewhere between adventure fantasy and children’s book whimsey, where dragons and fairies meet spiders and flies and giant pink rabbit-eared creatures appear in kids’ bedrooms. His work shows the influence of some of the classic children’s book illustrators like Arthur Rackham and perhaps John Bauer.
Toni DiTerlizzi has worked for TSR, doing illustrations for Dungeons and Dragons and has created illustrations for a number of other games, including the Magic the Gathering card based game, in which the fantasy illustrations are a major appeal of the game.
After working in gaming and fantasy for a number of years, DiTerlizzi moved into children’s books, writing and drawing his own titles, Jimmy Zangwow’s Out-of-this-World Moon Pie Adventure and Ted, as well as illustrating the work of other authors including the Alien and Possum series by Tony Johnson and the Ribbiting Tales collection.
In 2003 he co-created with Holly Black The Spiderwick Chronicles, revisited in 2005 with Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You.
DiTerlizzi’s site got a major makeover several months ago, reappearing as a spiffed-up Flash version with gallery drawers, video clips, animated hearers and a nice looking interface. Personally, I preferred the older, less polished version because I thought it was easier to see his artwork.
The new site still has plenty of DiTerlizzi’s charming artwork, however, both in galleries and as downloadable wallpaper. He works in watercolor, pastel and, by my guess, gouache and other mixed media as well. Some of the gallery selections include preliminary sketches and pencil drawings of his illustrations.
its gooood!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wow, I’m glad that I’m not the only one that liked his old site better….and for the very same reasons. His new site is interesting and fun, but the old site gave bigger images of his artwork. Ah well, better marketability I guess. Still, he’s one of the best fantasy artists out there today!
very nice
hi I have the whole series of the spiderwick books and I love the fact that you use fantasy creatures. This spiderwick book is the only book I have read with fantasy creatures.thank you for reminding me that you dont have to do what your friends say to do or they what they have done trying to make you do it.
sincerely,
sunny (my nickname)