
"dinosaur" (δεινόσαυρος), which literally means "terrible lizard"). In Greek, "Dinotopia" (Δεινοτοπία) means "terrible place" or "land of suffering" (cf.
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He called the series "Dinotopia": a portmanteau of "dinosaur" and "utopia". Rather than digital tools, Gurney used "plein-air studies, thumbnail sketches, models photographed in costume and original cardboard or clay maquettes" to create 150 oil paintings for his 2007 Dinotopia book.

Gurney later decided to create an imaginary island based on these paintings. These were originally done as art prints for collectors. This inspired him to imagine his own, so he painted "Waterfall City" and "Dinosaur parade". Gurney's assignments for National Geographic required him to work with archaeologists to envision and paint ancient cities that no one alive today has ever seen. (Wikipedia)Ĭoncerning Dinotopia, and its role in influencing Star Wars: On Tuesday, February 21, 2012, Gurney was inducted as a Living Master by the Art Renewal Center. These books are based upon Gurney's blog posts, in which he gives practical advice to realist and fantasy artists. Most recently, Gurney has written two art instruction books: Imaginative Realism (2009), a book about drawing and painting things that don't exist, and Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (2010). Original artwork by Gurney from the Dinotopia books has been exhibited at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution, the Norman Rockwell Museum, the Royal Tyrrell Museum, and is currently on tour to museums throughout the United States and Europe.

Sequels of Dinotopia that are both written and illustrated by Gurney include Dinotopia: The World Beneath (1995), Dinotopia: First Flight (1999), and Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara (2007). It sold over a million copies and was translated into 18 languages. The book landed on the New York Times Bestseller List, and won Hugo, World Fantasy, Chesley, Spectrum, and Colorado Children’s Book awards. With the encouragement of retired publishers Ian and Betty Ballantine, he discontinued his freelance work, and committed two years’ time to writing and illustrating Dinotopia: a Land Apart from Time, which was published in 1992. The inspiration that came from researching these archaeological reconstructions led to a series of lost world panoramas, including Waterfall City (1988) and Dinosaur Parade (1989). Starting in 1983, he began work on over a dozen assignments for National Geographic, including reconstructions of the ancient Moche, Kushite, and Etruscan civilizations, and the Jason and Ulysses voyages for Tim Severin. He painted more than 70 covers for science fiction and fantasy paperback novels, and he created several stamp designs for the US Postal Service, most notably The World of Dinosaurs in 1996. Gurney's freelance illustration career began in the 1980s, during which time he developed his characteristic realistic renderings of fantastic scenes, painted in oil using methods similar to the academic realists and Golden Age illustrators. Gurney and Kinkade also worked as painters of background scenes for the animated film Fire and Ice, co-produced by Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta. Prompted by a cross-country adventure on freight trains, he and Thomas Kinkade coauthored The Artist’s Guide to Sketching in 1982. He then studied illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California for a couple of semesters. He studied archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a BA in Anthropology with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1979.

James Gurney grew up in Palo Alto, California, the youngest of five children of Joanna and Robert Gurney, a mechanical engineer.Įncouraged to tinker in the workshop, he built puppets, gliders, masks, and kites, and taught himself to draw by means of books about the illustrators Howard Pyle and Norman Rockwell.

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Gurney, who also taught himself how to draw, also worked with animation icon Ralph Bakshi for a time, prior to writing Dinotopia. The dinosaur Torvosaurus gurneyi was named in honour of Gurney in 2014. He also holds as BA in anthropology, and even has a dinosaur species named in his honor. and yet its illustrations, worldbuilding, and visuals have largely inspired both George Lucas's Star Wars (from the prequel trilogy to the present-day Disney helmship), and even James Cameron's Avatarįor those unaware, Dinotopia, or Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, was originally a book written, and illustrated, by James Gurney, an artist who also studied archaeology and anthropology. It seems, to my knowledge, that the work Dinotopia is relatively obscure.
