JacketFlap connects you to the work of more than 200,000 authors, illustrators, publishers and other creators of books for Children and Young Adults. The site is updated daily with information about every book, author, illustrator, and publisher in the children's / young adult book industry. Members include published authors and illustrators, librarians, agents, editors, publicists, booksellers, publishers and fans. Join now (it's free).
Login or Register for free to create your own customized page of blog posts from your favorite blogs. You can also add blogs by clicking the "Add to MyJacketFlap" links next to the blog name in each post.
Blog Posts by Tag
In the past 7 days
Blog Posts by Date
Click days in this calendar to see posts by day or month
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Journey to Chandara, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 26 - 40 of 40
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: Journey to Chandara in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
Fantasy Art Magazine, the leading professional magazine in China for the imaginative arts, has just published a 10-page portfolio of Dinotopia artwork.
The recent book Journey to Chandara, features some of China's exciting dinosaur discoveries, such as the Microraptor from the Liaoning province, and great discoveries from the Gobi desert, such as Protoceratops and Oviraptor. The interior of of Chandara's Imperial Palace was based on the historic photographs of temple interiors by John Thomson. (1837-1921)
Dinotopia books have been released in China in three different translated editions. Happy New Year (Year of the Tiger, Feb. 14) to my friends at Fantasy Art Magazine.
3 Comments on Dinotopia in China, last added: 2/11/2010
(Note: This is the third and final part of a series of posts adapted from Imaginative Realism, Andrews McMeel, October, 2009). Please follow these links to the earlier posts, Part 1 and Part 2.)
By adding together the eye movement data from a group of test subjects, we can learn where most people look in a given picture.
To create the image below, the eye-tracking technology recorded the scanpath data of sixteen different subjects and compiled the information into composite images, called heatmaps. The red and orange colors show where 80-100% of the subjects halted their gaze. The bluer or darker areas show where hardly anyone looked.
Here’s the heatmap for the painting Marketplace of Ideas, which we discussed in the last two posts.
It turns out that there was very little interest in either of the main vertical columns. Instead, the red splotches reveal a concentration of interest in the figures. There were secondary interest areas in the far buildings and the sign in the upper right.
The interest in people, especially faces, appears to reflect a hardwired instinct to understand our fellow humans.
In the heatmap for Chasing Shadows, which shows a group of children running along a beach with a Brachiosaurus, there’s a strong focal point around the dinosaur's front feet and the nearby running children.
There are secondary points of interest at the dinosaur’s head and the leading child. Note how the action of the walking pose was read without directly looking at the rear leg.
Other spots of interest congregate around the dinosaur’s tail, the base and the top of the tree, and the vanishing point along the beach.
Hardly anyone looked directly at the sky, the upper palm fronds, or the middle section of the palm trunk. But these areas were presumably perceived in the halo of peripheral vision around the center point of vision.
Have a look at this painting, and be aware of where your eyes travel.
The heatmap for the painting Camouflage (click to enlarge) shows that everyone noticed the dinosaur’s face. They also spotted the hidden man and the small pink dinosaur.
According to statistical data connected to timing, these three faces drew almost everyone’s attention within the first five seconds. The dinosaur's face was statistically the first thing most people looked at, followed quickly by the hiding man. Below is one subject's scanpath, with the black numbers counting off seconds.
I was surprised that the two patches of lichen on the tree above the man scored near 100% attention. Evidently viewers noticed these strange shapes in their peripheral vision and checked them to make sure they weren’t important, or somehow a threat to the man. From a narrative standpoint, I suppose they were a bit of a red herring, distracting with no payoff.
The sunken log and the detailed patch of leaves in the lower left drew 60% of the viewers, perhaps because those were likely places for other dangers to hide.
Just because an element has sharp detail or strong tonal contrasts, it doesn’t necessarily attract the eye. The dark branches behind the dinosaur’s head drew almost no attention because they fit into the natural schema of a forest scene. Apparently the viewers developed a search strategy based on the threatening situation of a hungry dinosaur looking for a bite to eat.
PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS These experiments force us to question a few of our cherished notions about composition and picture-gazing.
1. The eye does not flow in smooth curves or circles, nor does it follow contours. It leaps from one point of interest to another. Curving lines or other devices may be "felt" in some way peripherally, but the eye doesn't move along them.
2. Placing an element on a golden section grid line doesn’t automatically attract attention. If an attention-getting element such as a face is placed in the scene, it will gather attention wherever you place it.
3. Two people don’t scan the same picture along the same route. But they do behave according to an overall strategy that alternates between establishing context and studying detail.
4. The viewer is not a passive player continuously controlled by a composition. Each person confronts an image actively, driven by a combination of conscious and unconscious impulses, which are influenced, but not determined, by the design of the picture.
5. The unconscious impulses seem to include the establishment of hierarchies of interest based on normal expectations or schema of a scene. For example, highly contrasting patterns of foliage or branches will not directly draw the gaze unless they are perceived as anomalous in the peripheral vision.
5. As pictorial designers we shouldn’t think in abstract terms alone. Abstract design elements do play a role in influencing where viewers look in a picture, but in pictures that include people or animals or a suggestion of a story, the human and narrative elements are what direct our exploration of a picture.
As Dr. Edwards succinctly puts it, “abstract design gets trumped by human stories.” The job of the artist, then, in composing pictures about people is to use abstract tools to reinforce the viewer’s natural desire to seek out a face and a story.
-------------- Related previous posts on GurneyJourney: Introduction to eyetracking, link. How perception of faces is coded differently, link.
It was with a sense of relief and absolution that I read your first conclusion:
1. The eye does not flow in smooth curves or circles, nor does it follow contours. It leaps from one point of interest to another. Curving lines or other devices may be "felt" in some way peripherally, but the eye doesn't move along them.
Many times, I've looked at a painting and then read some analysis of it that said there was an embedded flow in the painting that the eye "followed," complete with a black arrow showing where it was. I knew my eyes hadn't made a tidy sweep. I was caught by a detail, then another, then another. Reading these analyses always made me feel I was too dense to "get" the route. It seems I was not alone.
Thank you very much for this series. It's quite enlightening. Were there any conclusions to what happens in compositions that just involve inanimate objects? Still life studies, for example. Or was this covered elsewhere?
Very ineresting! Do illustrators or painters have a different eye path than "normal" people? And what would be your eye path on one of your own painting?
Does there necessarily have to be a connection between eye tracking and aesthetic value; would the results be any different if participants were told to stare at amateur artwork?
Sequential movements are a necessary result of the eye's small area of focus; making teleological assumptions is a great leap it seems to me.
I'm glad you brought up the idea of a picture with something "hidden". I know when I first looked at it and saw the two characters hidden in the leaves, I immediately started looking for anything else hidden. I don't think I would have done this if the two had been completely free of camouflage. It would be an interesting experiment to see whether the suject's attention is more focused on the three faces and less on the surrounding area if the same image were shown but without the camouflaging leaves on the two foreground characters.
(I remember this picture, and this event, from the book. I also remember another picture of the swamp, in which there were some crocodiles which were very obvious but also some well-camouflaged other animals: a snake that blended in very well with the fallen branches all around it, and a dragonfly. I enjoyed looking for all the hidden critters and finding them felt very satisfying.)
boy looks like a lot of misconceptions concerning those art rules teachers repeatedly drilled into there art students heads about controling the viewer with contour lines and divding the painting into thirds for focal points.....all looks like a bunch of bs now, haha.
i'm tempted to email this link to a few of my old art teachers, once again mr gurney your are on the cutting edge and making huge changes and improvments in the art world, thank you!
Great series, Jim! The only thing I'll add has to do with the dark trees behind the dinosaur's head. Whenever I'm composing an image, I try to pay attention to meta-contrast, a term that I slapped together to define contrast of contrast.
Contrast is always seen within context, so while something may have very high contrast, if everything surrounding it does as well, then it's lost its ability to call attention to itself. Also, in this case, the trees can't possibly compete with that dinosaur.
I believe the old rules for composition probably provide a feeling of balance and understanding that then allows the eye to follow a path according to interest of content. If those elements aren't there , say in beginner's work, the eye probably treats things as separate objects or scans more constantly trying to make sense of the image.
etc,etc -- i don't know if teleology enters into it -- we are talking about a painting designed by a human for humans. The viewers are willing participants in the artifice -- and humans are always search for context and meaning.
This has been a very interesting series. I'd love to see the same experiments done with completely abstract art to see if similar patterns of jumping from one area to another were observed or whether this behaviour is only seen in representational art where the viewer is constructing a narrative as they look.
Very interesting. I'm curious if there has been any study on what happens after that first impression. I'm also curious if artists look a picture differently than most, perhaps stopping at interesting painting technique, or maybe taking it in more slowly with less over all darting.
Like Joe, I'm also curious what might come of looking at a pure landscape. It seems to me that "establishing context and studying detail" would necessarily happen in any composition, of course, relative to the image.
I've never believed that composition did much more than influence a viewer, because over the years I've conducted a test asking students to track the movement in a painting. I have them close their eyes and determine to note the first thing they look at, then repeat the process to figure out a rough pathway of the eye. The pathway often varies, except where there's some sock-it-to-you contrast, color or detail that's virtually unavoidable.
In your fifth point you say, "Abstract design elements do play a role in influencing where viewers look in a picture, but in pictures that include people or animals or a suggestion of a story, the human and narrative elements are what direct our exploration of a picture." So what of the non-narrative painting? Does abstraction play a more significant role then? Has Dr. Edwards explored that aspect?
Thanks for the lesson! Very instructive and interesting.
I read this post a couple of times to be able to capture it all. (Especially the sentense "The unconscious impulses seem to include the establishment of hierarchies of interest based on normal expectations or schema of a scene." - gasp! That one has a high 'Art-By-Committee' potential!) If you mean "A viewer will unconsciously be drawn to what seems anomalous in a scene." then, by Jove, I've got it!
But seriously, what do I want to remember from this great and thourough experiment? Let's be pragmatic and stick to a minimal set of practical rules-of-thumb.
1. Forget about composition, focus on 'interest'! (or...people first, and only then worry about compostion.)
2. Want to draw attention to something? Put a spotlight on it! (or...use whatever way to make it look just that little bit anomalous and it will automatically grab the viewer's attention.)
3. Don't overdo the above or underestimate your audience. They have a "natural desire to seek out a face and a story."
As a final side note: the common-sense notion that it's a good idea to place a human being in a landscape may actually be a very bad idea: the fella will suck up all the attention. No?
Thank you so much for sharing this experiment! I have to tell you I had a good laugh when I saw the first eye patterns, because they were so completely random, it was hard for me to see anyway to derive meaning from it. Here's one observation. In your first example painting, you wondered what role the tower would play, since it was along a golden mean line. If you look at the green dot (starting point), that tower was the first thing your viewer gazed on. So, what about all the other viewers? You should make more composite images, including all the green dots to see what drew people's attention first, and second, not just this average of where they gazed the longest.
I think this information would greatly add to your study.
This has been a very educational experience for me. As an artist and a fan of science, I can't thank you enough for putting this together. Ever since seeing you speak in San Francisco, I have had a whole new level of respect for the mind behind the art.
This has been an unbelievably fascinating experiment by you!!!
I have to admit, I wonder how much further you could take this into examining our id brain's dominance over our compositional understanding. For instance, if you put a naked lady in the LEAST attractive compositional spot, will it derail all of an artist's careful scholarly planning of composition?
The column is interesting in its lack of focus. I had always tried to figure that out about Steelyard or thirds cross sections. Do we end up looking at the paths, or do we look at the focal point cross section? You could argue the column succeeds greatly, because one of the biggest hotspots is its cross section with the horizon.
Thanks for putting all this great info out there! Can't wait for Imaginative Realism!!!!
Even though the eye does hop from one place to the other, if there is a strong "flow" in a composition I believe the eye would follow it to some degree... especially in more abstract artwork.
I tried viewing the image with the hidden man myself before I looked at the eye-path scan. I looked first at the dinosaurs face, the followed down to his feet, and immediately looked at that bush next to it... I don't think it has anything to do with "hidden dangers" as much as it was the direction the dino seemed to be moving and the bush was an object that my eyes could easily rest on. When I realized the bush wasn't terribly interesting, I moved to the lichen, down the tree and then spotted the man and did a double take. Ha.
Great experiment. Thanks again. Some good stuff to munch on for a while!
Hold on to your design elements and pictorial composition manuals!
Let’s not through the baby out with the bathwater!! Just because the Human Animal has evolved to gather visual information in a way that does not jive with what we have learned and developed over the past several hundred years as techniques for creating ‘good’ design and pictorial compositions, it does not mean that those techniques are wrong or should be discarded. This eye tracking info is quite compelling and should be explored. We can add this to what we know about creating beautiful and compelling art. It is obviously misguided to think that we are ‘controlling’ or ‘manipulating’ the way a viewer gathers visual information when looking at, or mapping, an image. But that is not the same thing as having an aesthetic experience about the map we have created by our looking. We ‘experience’ the painting as a whole, after we have gathered all of the visual information we need to create a map of it in our mind. A painting with solid design and compositional elements is, in my experience, more pleasing and compelling, than one without.
As Mr. Gurney’s second #5 preliminary conclusion states:
“As pictorial designers we shouldn’t think in abstract terms alone. Abstract design elements do play a role in influencing where viewers look in a picture, but in pictures that include people or animals or a suggestion of a story, the human and narrative elements are what direct our exploration of a picture.” And I would add … while pictorial composition and design reinforces or enhances our aesthetic experience of the story.
As Dr. Edwards succinctly puts it, … The job of the artist, then, in composing pictures about people is to use abstract tools to reinforce the viewer’s natural desire to seek out a face and a story.
As several other Jouneyers have suggested, I’d love to see these eye-maps done with purely abstract compositions, both with color and in black and white.
In considering this Eye Tracking and Composition Journey, I got to thinking about some of those paintings that are very successful and compelling in spite of their breaking or bending the rules of dynamic composition. The one that always stands out for me is Leonardo’s ‘Last Super.’ The main element of this most famous and successful painting is placed right smack in the middle of the composition, in complete violation of the most fundamental rule of design. And instead of compensating for this by some other trick of the eye, he reinforces the offense by nailing the main figure to the picture plane with the vanishing points of the other elements in the painting! Perhaps the great master understood what Dr. Edwards said, that “abstract design gets trumped by human stories.” Leonardo “use(d) abstract tools to reinforce the viewer’s natural desire to seek out a face and a story” and he placed the dominant figure, the image of God, at the center of the world and then uses the composition (abstract design) as a device to crucify him. Wow! Pretty powerful stuff! -RQ
Roberto, Daroo, Eric, and Etc: I agree--no need to chuck the traditional design theory (or write emails to your old art teachers!). The stuff they taught is useful if it leads to good pictures. Knowing how the eye actually moves around doesn't change the fact that some images feel harmonious and others don't. That's where science ends and art begins.
Erik: Sorry for the confusing sentence. I tried to edit my draft at 4 a.m.--dangerous. What I meant to say is that our brains automatically set up search strategies that favor anomalies. Or how 'bout: "We notice things that stand out."
Oscar, I'm glad you mentioned the column's importance even though it wasn't a fovea target. I think what the eye-tracking analysis misses is how things we DON'T look at help support the things we do look at.
There must be a lot of image processing going on in our peripheral vision. And a lot of areas in a picture that get passed over. What does that mean for us painters? If an area of the picture doesn't draw much attention, should we downplay it even more?
Joe, actually that 15-second "first impression" seems like an eternity to the test subjects. If you gave them a button and let them advance the screen, they'd spend only three or four seconds on each image. Ouch!
There was a good article on this topic in "Scientific American" June 1971, by David Noton and Lawrence Stark. It shows similar tracking records.
It is interesting to set up a video camera to show a close up of the eye of a person reading. The saccades are very obvious. The surprising thing is that vision is completely switched off during the "jump" - you do not see a streak as the eye moves. (Some people seem to see a bit of a streak - presumably their timing is not exact.) Try looking at yourself closely in a mirror: look at one eye and then at the other. You do not see the eyes moving.
As for traditional composition, I think that has its place further on in the visual process, when the mind is considering the picture as a whole, as an object in its own right.
What happens when one is taking photographs? In this case, you are looking for a composition in a real world which is not composed.
Tried to post this yesterday but it didn't seem to go through.
Jim, Id be curios to see how in the future you will use this information in your picture making. How or how much will this influence you. Will you be making different compositional decisions now knowing this? And if so Id love to see a step by step of a piece maybe showing these different compositional decisions being made. Explaining the reasons behind some of these decisions maybe comparing to old tried and true rules. Possibly a future Gurney Journey post?
Dan Zimmer is best known for the beautifully produced ILLUSTRATION magazine, which is about the history of American Illustration. He also publishes ILLO, a book-length spotlight on the contemporary illustration scene.
He has just released ILLO 2, which features interviews with Michael Cho, Nancy Stahl, and Zina Saunders. Somehow I got lucky and they included me, too.
It’s hard to convey how extensive the coverage is on each person without actually seeing the whole issue, so here's every page. Go to a newsstand and pick one up so that Mr. Zimmer can keep making future issues. There are a lot of other deserving illustrators that he still needs to cover.
congrats man! your art is amazing-a true artist and your blog is very informative I'm a 'pro' meaning..i get paid for art-but I feel like an amateur when I see your stuff (and read your articles) keep it up my friend!
This is Part 6 in the ongoing progress report on the Utopiales poster. The first steps of an oil painting are really important, because they set up opportunities for later stages of the rendering.
When I paint an imaginary scene in oil, I usually try for three strategies in the first statement: 1.Establish the overall color temperature for each region of the picture. 2. Suggest the large tonal statement of light and dark. 3. Keep everything a little lighter than the final rendering will be.
Following strategy #3 leaves you the option to achieve your final color rendering either transparently or opaquely. If you go too dark too soon, you can only correct it with opaques. Comparing the first step with the final below of Old Conductor from Journey to Chandara, the washin should look like the intended finish with a piece of tracing paper laid over it.
The reason for #2 is that every judgment needs to be seen in context. If you paint each area starting from white, like paint-by-numbers, it’s harder to make accurate choices. It can be done, but to me it makes more sense for observational work.
The first strategy could be called a color imprimatura. A moonlight scene might be washed all over with a light blue-green. If the scene has different colored lights, each light region should be bathed in the color of each source. If there are multi-colored light sources, a white object will take on the relative color of each source. ------ Thanks to Online University Reviews for naming Gurney Journey one of the "100 Best Scholarly Art Blogs" (#65, right next to my buddy Tony DiTerlizzi.) Kudos to my assistant professor, my budgie! ------ Earlier post on "Area-by-Area" painting, link.
7 Comments on Utopiales Poster, Part 6: Washin, last added: 7/6/2009
So the utopiales piece used method 1? I might have to try that...
I've been studying oil techniques in an attempt to prove my digital painting skills (though I should probably grab myself some actual oils...) A common thing I've noticed in some paintings is using a monochromatic tonal wash beforehand, to set up your values, then start a wash of colors over that. Is this considered the second method, or something else entirely?
100 Best Scholarly Art Blogs I concur! I have been studying 'serious' painting in NYC for five years now - and while the training is great, there is suprisingly little discussion or information 'out there' about painting from the imagination, or even painting 'realistically' but not necessarily what's in front of you...i don't doubt your book coming out in sept will fill a lot of gaps, the same way Juliette Arstides books on classical painting and drawing have. (and no Mr. Gurney did not pay me to write this :) )
Drew, good questions, and I see my writing wasn't clear. I meant to say that I try to do all three strategies at once in this kind of painting: establish color atmosphere, work out values, and keep it fairly light.
This first stage goes down very quickly with transparent oil color and a big bristle brush, scrubbing across large areas. It's dry in a few hours, ready for the next layer.
Thanks, I, me. That art blog list includes a bunch of great art blogs that I admire, such as Lines and Colors, Making a Mark, and Drawn. But I think they missed some great ones, like Irene Gallo's blog (The Art Department), David Apatoff's (Illustration Art), and Armand Cabrera's (Art and Influence). Those should be linked on my blogroll.
So you let the transparent wash dry first before you start painting over it -- and not painting into it like Loomis suggests?
I guess, when I think about it he's talking about a single overall tone and not a full blown transparent block-in (like the Chandara example).
Do you use any medium?
I really like painting into a tone made using the Ralph Mayer medium mix while its still wet -- I just find it a really receptive surface. It doesn't cause too much glare (which is the problem I've had with Liquin).
Watching this unfold is fascinating. Thanks for posting the process. (I'd make some parakeet joke, about the video in your last post, but I think the topic has been well addressed.)
The exhibition "Return to Dinotopia" opened on April 4 at the Centre for Life in Newcastle (UK).
Patrick Gyger, director of Maison d'Ailleurs, supervised the installation. Here’s how the room looked before the exhibition was fully in place.
Jeanette and I are looking forward to visiting Newcastle-upon-Tyne this summer to see the museum and to visit some schools in the area.
The Dinotopia exhibition consists of about 50 original oil paintings from Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara (2007). The show will continue for the whole summer, after which it will travel to Nantes in France for the Utopiales festival.
If there are any other museums in Europe that might be interested in hosting the “Return to Dinotopia” in 2010 and beyond, please contact Patrick Gyger, link.
I was just there in November. Bummer that I missed this exhibit by only a few months. There are some nice paintings in the Laing Art Gallery though (Lawrence Talma Adema, William Holman Hunt, John Martin and more).
Dinotopia: l'ile aux dinosaures A quoi ressemble Ie parfait recit imaginaire? A Dinotopia. Imaginez une ile aux paysages epoustouflants ou humains et dinosaures vivent en harmonie, une ville d'architecture classique construite a flanc de falaise, bordee de cascadesgeantes qu'enjambent des ponts sculptes. Sous un vol de pterosaures, des enfants partent a I'ecole dans un bus Apatosaurus et croisent un Brachiosaurus pompier… Ala maniere d'un Francois Place qui revisitait Ie recit d'exploration avec ses Derniers Giants, James Gurney embarque Ie lecteur encore plus loin dans Ie fantastique. Sous forme de camet de voyage, ses deux heros, Arthur Denison et son fils Will, content leur expedition a Chandara, un ancien empire interdit. Ils y rencontrent des merveilles de la civilisation dinotopienne mais aussi des Tyrannosaures qui ont envahi les basses terres ... Suivez l'etrange caravane, composee de porteurs de blasons et de triceratops. Partez pour un voyage au bout de l'utopie. II etait temps que I'on redecouvre en France cette serie fantastique traduite en dix-huit langues et creee il y a une dizaine d'annees par cet ancien illustrateur du National Geographic. Gurney propose mieux qu'une cartographie de I'imaginaire. Un monde qui fera rever bien des generations. NathalieRiche (Lire) **Dinotopia. Un voyage a Chandara par James Gurney, traduit de I'americain par Juliette Saumande, 160 p., Fleurus
2 Comments on Review of Un Voyage a Chandara, last added: 1/27/2009
That's a really nice review! Congratulations :) It's too bad your work i so hard to find around here (in France). But Un voyage à Chandara is at home on our shelves :)
^^ An Ad for Dinotopia in France??? Its an amazing thing. Since the book is available here, i never saw or heard an adversiting or a article on magazine about it!!!So that's why, Cecile, it's hard to find it^^ Even for Christmas, when libraries puts "wonderful" books to attract customers, Dinotopia wasn't with them!!!
But i've got it^^and i only got the first Dinotopia (in English) and it's a couple of amazing books!!!
The Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (ASFA) recently announced their 2007 awards, based on the vote of working artist members. Donato Giancola was the big winner, with five awards, including best hardback and paperback cover. Michael Kaluta won in the Artistic Achievement category, and Irene Gallo was chosen as the best Art Director (see her art/illustration blog here).
If you will pardon me for tooting my own horn, Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara was chosen in the Best Interior Illustration category. I am very grateful to the members of ASFA for their vote of support.
If you're still looking for that last special holiday gift for that artistic someone, you can get Gurney-signed copies of the Chandara book or the Chesley Award Retrospective from the Dinotopia Store. If you send in your check today (USA only) you should get the book in plenty of time for Christmas. End pitch.
10 Comments on ASFA Awards, last added: 12/10/2008
Try again and miss the grammatical errors this time:
Yes congratulations James! Unfortunately I cannot get them to send 'Journey to Chandara' to New Zealand, well only for a big postage bill, anyway... :-( I expect I can get it here, but I would love a signed copy. Perhaps on your next trip, you (both) would like to come down to these warm antipodean Islands, sign my books and stay with me? Think 'Lord of the Rings' landscapes...
What? An Arthur Denison action figure? And isn’t that Nallab the librarian all beefed up and ready for adventure?
Back in 1995 when Dinotopia was in development for a theatrical motion picture, the Hasbro toy company embarked on an ambitious proposal for a Dinotopia toy line. What you are looking at are one-of-a-kind presentation prototypes, not production toys.
Focus group tests at Hasbro showed that boys and girls liked Dinotopia equally and that kids spontaneously played with dinosaur toys by having people feeding the dinosaurs and riding them, not just the “attack mode” that has become so commonplace. Hasbro took the unprecedented step of teaming up their boy and girl toy designers to generate ideas in what is normally a very gender-segregated and conceptually stereotyped category of merchandise.
For my own part, starting as early as 1991, I did a number of sketches to explore how my characters might look if they were translated visually in other forms.
Above are some character key drawings in gouache with an acetate overlay to see how they would look in line and flat color.
The theatrical motion picture never came to pass, and neither did the toys, which is a common fate of concept proposals. In 1999, we decided to permit a TV miniseries to move forward instead, and we strictly limited the merchandising—but that’s another story.
On future posts, if you’re interested, I’ll share a few of the exploratory prototypes as well as some of my own unpublished development sketches. --------- I’d like to express my thanks and appreciation to the talented team at Hasbro, as well as Michael Stone of The Beanstalk Group, plus Jim Black, Ken Ralston and Lynda Guber, together with Robert Gould of Imaginosis, who helped develop the film project.
12 Comments on Action Figures, last added: 6/30/2008
For several years, I sculpted toys for The Toy Vault, and it was an interesting experience. You never know how literary works will be interpreted. With the physiques of your characters looking so "beefed up," they look more like figures from an animated series. Has there been talk of a Dinotopia cartoon?
Yes! I would love to see more from the unproduced toy line. I am also curious as to why the merchandising for the miniseries was limited; the Alpha-Series eggs for Hallmark were awesome!
Thanks for sharing these great prototypes with us=) Who is the guy on the far left?
How frustrating (for me). I'd love to have Dinotopia toys. Love seeing the characters rendered in flat colours, this is what I imagine the comic book might look like.
Those toys look awesome! I'd love to hear more. I guess I never grew up. I still have action figures on my file cabinet at school. It's just really cool to see characters in 3D, relatively inexpensive.
The characters translate well into line art with flat color. I think there should be Dinotopia comics as well.
I would definitely love to see more about this... always up for more dinotopia!
merchandising seems to be a tricky thing, something I don't quite understand yet... I guess there is the right balance between enriching/ further developing a line and innundating the market.
I too am very curious about the figure on the far left... i have no idea who he is...
James, Trust me, with my kids loving all things Dinotopia, we would have had Dinotopia figures everywhere in the 90's if these came out. I'm sure a skybax rider would have been introduced in series 2. Randall
Thanks, everyone. I have lots of other prototypes to show you in future posts.
Ricardo, I tried developing character models in a lot of different media—pen, ink, oil—but sculpting them helped me finalize them the most.
Azonthus and Ljay, I think the character on the left was named Thomas, if memory serves. He was a rival of Will's in the skybax camp of the Columbia screenplay, which adapted the first two books.
Even though I'd be as happy to sell out as the next guy, there were two main reasons we limited licensing. One is that it's really time consuming to supervise unless you have a staff (which we don't) and I wanted to keep my time for writing and illustrating.
The second reason is that I really wanted any new licensed form to advance the narrative and build the world in interesting ways. So it was a privilege to work with Alan Dean Foster, Scott Ciencin, and others on the novels.
Eric, we had the opportunity to do a line of Dinotopia comics, but I said no, thanks, because I felt that the art form of comics is too similar to the sequential art form of the original books.
The April issue of Ranger Rick magazine devotes eight pages to a portfolio from Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, exploring how dinosaurs help humans and vice versa. There's also a page with an exclusive feature: "Where did the idea for Dinotopia come from, anyway?"
Ranger Rick is my favorite nature magazine, and this issue has plenty of other fun stuff, like advice on how to properly skip a stone, catch a frog, make a dandelion chain, and whistle with a blade of grass. Do any of those things, and you'll know that spring is here at last.
4 Comments on Ranger Rick, April 2008, last added: 3/23/2008
I grew up on Ranger Rick and couldn't wait for each issue to arrive. I'm glad it's still in publication and that your work is being shown in it.
Carnadine said, on 3/22/2008 5:59:00 PM
That's awesome - I loved that magazine as a kid. I know I'd have been thrilled to see a piece on Dinotopia back when I still got it.
Heather said, on 3/22/2008 9:45:00 PM
That's great!
What is the large teal and purple dinosaur to the right in the bottom middle image? Giganotosaurus? I checked my book because I couldn't remember seeing it there (got it last week!), and I noticed your painting is cut off on the right side, meaning Mr. Dino has no head. Awww.
James Gurney said, on 3/23/2008 5:19:00 AM
Very observant of you, Heather.
That painting in its full cropping was originally done for a greeting card that I designed. It shows a Tyrannosaurus in bright colors joining the parade of kids (what was I thinking?!). When I reused the image in Journey to Chandara, I deliberately cropped his head to avoid the obvious question: what is that tyrannosaur doing in the parade?
a. fortis said, on 3/26/2008 2:08:00 AM
It's great to see Ranger Rick is still around--I remember getting that as a kid. Congrats on being featured in it!
Light coming through trees results in the spotted light we know as dappled light. The painting below is by Ivan Shishkin.
The circular spots of light shining on the ground vary in size depending on how high the canopy is above the ground. A high tree canopy leads to larger circles with softer edges. Below, in this early Albert Bierstadt painting called “Sunlight and Shadow” the effects of dappled light are worked out extremely convincingly.
When bundles of light pass through small spaces between the leaves, each of those spaces act like a pinhole camera. The parcels of light are essentially like conical shapes of illumination radiating from each pinhole in the foliage.
The circles of light touching the ground are actually projections of the disk of the sun. In fact on days with a partial eclipse of the sun, the circles of light will appear as half circles. In the 8x10 inch oil study above, the circles of light on the roof of the shed are about a foot in diameter.
When each cone of light intersects a sloping surface like a wall, it results in an elliptical shape. On a vertical surface parallel to the picture plane, the long axis of that ellipse will always angle back toward the source of the light.
In the detail above from Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, the light is coming from the right. The circles become ellipses as the form of the ship's red hull curves away on the left side.
Therefore, ellipses of light projected on a wall in front of us will slope upward to the right only if the sun is also coming from the right, as it is in this photo also.
Apparently N.C. Wyeth was unaware of this principle when he designed this otherwise fine illustration of Ben Franklin’s arrival in Philadelphia. The result is an error in lighting. According to the cast shadows from Franklin’s leg and from the tree branch at the bottom of the picture, the light is coming from above and to the right. But the ellipses of light on the wall point impossibly to a light source above and to the left.
Further discussion of dappled light, with photographic examples, on Edward Tufte's website, link.
Tomorrow: Business Cards, Illustrated
9 Comments on Dappled Light, last added: 3/20/2008
I'm not sure about the pinhole camera effect with the sun's light.
As far as I know, the sun is so far away that it's light rays are virtually parrallel. That's the reason the shadows (or light spots) are about equally big as the shadow's source or hole. And that's also the reason the stretched out light spots on a wall that is at an angle to the sun, are parrallel and not spread out like they would if the light source was a flashlight.
Of course you can get pinhole images of a landscape with the sun, so the effect does exists, but only visible with really small holes.
As an artist, I prefer the idea that the sun's light travels through holes in parrallel cylinders, like spaghetti dough pushed through the leaves.
I think CG folks will concur that they have different light sources for bulbs and for the sun because latter's rays need to go parrallel.
Don't shoot me...shoot my optics professor !
James Gurney said, on 3/18/2008 7:18:00 AM
Erik, you're right that the rays of sunlight are virtually parallel, but remember the sun is not a point source, but rather essentially a circle of a fixed diameter with rays heading out in all directions from all points on the circle. So the rays from the entire disk of the sun would project through a pinhole and cast a perfectly circlar image of the sun itself on any darkened surface.
I've made pinhole projectors that show very clear images of the sun, clear enough to see the transit of Venus and partial eclipses. The size of the spots of dappled light are not related to the size of the apertures, but rather they're a minimum size related to the distance from the projecting foliage. If you follow the link at the end of the post, there's a good diagram of this geometry, which is a bit tricky to explain without it.
Marc Hudgins said, on 3/18/2008 8:13:00 AM
Yet another excellent topic. Being an artist by trade, but the son of an engineer, I really enjoy discussions about the nuts and bolts of picture making and analysis of optical effects. I also love the Tufte reference! Have you ever gone to one of his seminars? They are a real treat.
Erik Bongers said, on 3/18/2008 8:23:00 AM
Ah, yes indeed. The pictures of the link clearly demonstrate it. There's indeed a minimum size of spots related to the distance of the foliage. I'm adjusting my rule-of-thumb now : Larger holes follow the 'parrallel light' rule, smaller holes will show as circles, ALL OF EQUAL SIZE.
The brightness will vary depending on the aperture. The minumum size depends on the distance surface->foliage.
Of course the 'equal size' is only the case if the pinholes are exactly at equal distance. The size is however NOT dependant on the size of the pinhole.
In addition, the blur at the edges of the really big holes will be comparable to the minimum size of these circular spots. Also, brightness of the really big holes will be constant.
Yes, yes, I see it now. Thanks for the clarification !
Rob Hummer said, on 3/18/2008 8:37:00 AM
There are a couple of great photos I've found that clearly show the pinhole camera effect of sunlight passing through foliage. Both were taken during partial eclipses and show multiple images of a crescent sun projected onto a wall and a parked car. They can be found at-
wycombeastro.org.uk/images/ps_eclipse_wall
suntrek.org/images/crescent-sun-car
As always, thanks for the great info James.
Darla said, on 3/18/2008 1:42:00 PM
The Wyeth picture is a really good example! Light and shadows are so interesting. I have been trying to pay more attention to that lately, since I have to create so many things out of my head. Even though I work from client's photos, I often have to change clothes or alter their surroundings, and that effects the light and shadows on occasion.
Charles Alexander said, on 3/18/2008 2:10:00 PM
Thank you for posting this-- very thought provoking!
James Gurney said, on 3/19/2008 1:39:00 AM
Marc, how cool that you got to go to one of Professor Tufte's seminars. I haven't heard him speak, but I've read a couple of his books, and I recommend them. Has anyone read the Minnaert text that he refers to in the link at the bottom of the post?
Erik, thanks for that last group of observations, which are very sensitive, and bring the whole understanding a step further.
a. fortis said, on 3/20/2008 5:25:00 PM
Not to be contrary (because I love this discussion about the pinhole cameras, etc.), but there could be a tree off to the left, out of the picture plane, casting the shadows...but I guess it's still a problem because of the perceived ambiguity of the shadows' source.
limbolo said, on 3/28/2008 3:33:00 AM
Wyeth's 'error' brings a subtle, uncanny mood to his painting. It is fascinating to know 'why' the picture is uncanny. Thanks for pointing this out Mr. Gurney
Because an incoming snowstorm is expected to dump over a foot of snow between here and Massachusetts tonight and tomorrow, the March 1 Dinotopia booksigning event at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA has been cancelled and now rescheduled for Saturday, April 26 at 11:00 a.m.
0 Comments on Tomorrow's Event Rescheduled as of 1/1/1990
gator said, on 2/29/2008 7:44:00 PM
sorry to hear that james,
you sure you cant burn through the snow with your lazer flame eyes from your tron goggles?
save us all SUPER-TRON-GOGGLE-MAN!
haha, but seriously, do you ever plan on coming back to D.C. and doing another show at the smithsonian natural history museam?
James Gurney said, on 2/29/2008 8:52:00 PM
Hey, Gator, Too bad the Tron goggles won't blast through the snowdrifts. But I will be in DC at Politics and Prose on March 11 at 10:30.
dana-redde said, on 3/1/2008 12:49:00 PM
Ah, I got excited when I saw the word "Massachusetts!" But alas, there's a big difference (and a very long walk, if you're a car-less college student) from Boston to South Hadley!
If you ever need to invent a bronze sculpture for a fantasy or science fiction painting, here are a couple of little tips to make the weathered surface more convincing.
I painted this oil study from observation to study how actual bronze surfaces weather. Note how the upfacing planes of the hat brim, the lapel, and the forehead are all oxidized to a light blue-green color.
The hollows and the downfacing planes weather in a different way as this photo shows. Instead of being entirely covered with a light blue-green oxidation, the downward planes tend to be darker and browner. This is because the downfacing planes are exposed to less rainwater. The top of the ball is also shielded from rain, and lacks oxidation. Wherever the planes face downward, the water is forced to flow in fixed rivulets. Each rivulet then becomes a line of oxidation.
You can play with this effect. This bronze head from the title page of Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara was entirely invented. Along the cheeks the rivulets almost look like the path of tears.
If the statue is in a public area, projecting forms are often buffed to a golden sheen from contact with the hands (or hides) of passersby.
As the rainwater drains off the statue, the dissolved oxides leave stains on the white marble below.
Tomorrow: Reply Card
0 Comments on Bronze Weathering as of 1/1/1990
=shane white= said, on 2/27/2008 2:04:00 PM
In another lifetime I created a weathering process for manufacturing of aluminum ornaments and resin sculptures that had to look like bronze, copper and even rust.
When you have to build it from the ground up, it certainly gives you a better understanding of how nature works.
I think I remember someone saying that Sargent would actually place the color of what he was mixing on the actual surface he was trying to replicated. Though it could have been Zorn...though he wasn't much of a colorist.
=s=
Victor said, on 2/27/2008 8:00:00 PM
You never cease to amaze me with your observations of nature. You don't just paint what is there, but you understand it, as well.
Robert A. Sloan said, on 2/29/2008 9:30:00 PM
This is very cool! Thanks for showing how bronze weathering looks. It'll help me a lot with my own illustrations, so cool that you're good enough to draw something that well just from imagination. I'm getting there.
Someday I'll be able to illustrate my own novels. And then decorate my blog, because a publisher would much rather buy from a well known illustrator than the author!
Realms of Fantasy magazine will have a six-page gallery feature on Dinotopia: Journey to Chandara, with an article by Karen Haber coming up in its April 2008 issue. It should hit the newsstands in a couple of weeks.
The issue also has an interview with Holly Black of Spiderwick, and fiction by Delia Sherman, Ken Scholes, Richard Parks, Graham Edwards, and Scott William Carter.
0 Comments on Realms of Fantasy, April Issue as of 1/1/1990
tlc illustration said, on 2/19/2008 8:45:00 PM
Just got my copy in the mail yesterday. Good article! Plus was fun to see Spiderwick (my ultimate-Spiderwick Chronicles-fan nieces give the movie a thumbs up) and other fantasy folks that I know all in one issue.
Michael Chesley Johnson, PSA, PSNM said, on 2/20/2008 1:34:00 AM
Wow, that magazine is still around! I had a fantasy story published in it years ago, back when I was actively writing fantasy. Brings back old memories.
Tony Shasteen said, on 2/21/2008 2:34:00 PM
Mr. Gurney, Your article was a nice surprise when I received the issue. My illustration accompanied Graham Edwards' story, Girl in Pieces. I'd say it was certainly in great company!
In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (another great cult classic like Alice) the answer to “the great question… of Life, the Universe and Everything is…forty two.” The better question of course, is what the great question is. The great computer Deep Thought says, “So once you know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means.” (more…)
.jpg?picon=1009)
The recent book Journey to Chandara, features some of China's exciting dinosaur discoveries, such as the Microraptor from the Liaoning province, and great discoveries from the Gobi desert, such as Protoceratops and Oviraptor. The interior of of Chandara's Imperial Palace was based on the historic photographs of temple interiors by John Thomson. (1837-1921)
Speaking of dinosaurs in China, have you seen this?
Dino Color
HAHA! 'grats to you being famous in China Mr Gurney! In mandarin, we say Chinese New Year to ppl through this 4 words: Gong Xi Fa Cai!
"Terrible dragons" indeed.