Wondla author
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Tony DiTerlizzi
American artist, writer and producer
"DiTerlizzi" redirects here. For the wine grape variety, see Pampanuto.
Tony M. DiTerlizzi[1] (born September 6, 1969) is an American fantasy artist, children's book creator, and motion picture producer.
In the gaming industry, he is best known for his work in the collectible card gameMagic: The Gathering and on the Planescape product line for the Dungeons & Dragonsrole-playing game. DiTerlizzi created The Spiderwick Chronicles series with Holly Black, and was an executive producer on the 2008 film adaptation of the series. He won a Caldecott Honor for his adaptation of The Spider and the Fly.
Early life
Tony DiTerlizzi was born in Los Angeles in 1969, the first of three children.[2] The name DiTerlizzi means "from Terlizzi", a village in Italy's Apulia region.[3] He grew up in South Florida where he attended South Fork High School.[2] He went to college at the Florida School of the Arts and The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale where he earned a graphic de
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Tony DiTerlizzi
Biography
“With magic as your captain you can choose just about any destination, any time, or any place if you never abandon imagination.”
Tony DiTerlizzi formally proclaimed his credo, “Never Abandon Imagination,” in the opening pages of his very first children’s book, Jimmy Zangwow’s Out-of-this-World Moon Pie Adventure (2000). However, those three words derived from the above quotation were first put to paper in a poetry journal written by the artist in summer 1995, and they hold as much weight for him today as they did then, when he first achieved recognition as an illustrator for the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.
In fact, DiTerlizzi has crafted an entire mission statement, more expressive and methodical than that twenty-two-year-old phrase, around which all of his past, present, and future work adheres.
The full text is as follows:
Imagination is a world of possibility that exists within each of us. It is what makes us uniquely human. It is our creative fingerprint that touches Tony DiTerlizzi might never have become the acclaimed illustrator he is today had it not been for an art teacher at Stuart’s South Fork High who noticed and nurtured his creative gifts. Back in those days, DiTerlizzi, now 55, says he was a skinny kid who listened to The Cure and didn’t feel like he fit in. He spent a lot of time drawing but wasn’t sure if it was a viable career, so he thought he might eventually pursue a career in marine biology. By senior year, he had taken every art class South Fork had to offer. Many teachers noticed his talent, but it was one particular art teacher, Tom Wetzl, who showed him that he could have a future as an illustrator. “Mr. Wetzl wanted to do this one-on-one class with me, where I’d figure out a semester-long project that would become the crown jewel of my portfolio,” DiTerlizzi recalls. “I decided I would redesign all the characters from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I modeled the Mad Hatter after Elton John, did an anime Alice, and mad
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Diterlizzi is the artist behind some of the world’s most popular children’s fantasy series
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