Monday, October 12, 2009

James Gurney


On Friday, James Gurney, author and illustrator of Dinotopia and now Imaginative Realism, visited Calarts to speak to us about creating what doesn't exist. He spoke about the processes he used to illustrate the world of the dinosaur utopia Dinotopia, and many other worlds that he brought from the imagination to paper. The talk was essentially his book "Imaginative Realism" in lecture form. If you haven't picked up a copy i would highly recommend it. He and his wife were selling copies of the book after the lecture. I picked one up and had him sign it. He drew an awesome T-Rex in 30 secs. Then he whipped out two more drawings of dinosaurs for the two Dinotopia books i have at home.

He had his sketch books in the back of the room and they were amazing. I got to show him my maquette that I've been working on. He seemed to like it and had some good tips for completing it, including some places to get good tips on painting it. Over all the talk was very inspiring. But the most inspiring thing was finding out he didn't start painting until he was 20. It's always good to hear that there is hope in the art world for late comers like me.

3 comments:

James Gurney said...

Hey, Trevor, Thanks for the nice writeup. It was inspiring to me to meet you and your classmates. I was blown away by all the work I saw, and now I can see why so many people in the movie studios are talking about the CalArts program.

yebkamin said...

Thanks for an awesome lecture!

SirGecko said...

Awesome man! That sounds pretty cool. I always loved those dinotopia books.

What I wish someone had told me before I came to Calarts

  • Get a coffee maker of some kind
  • For your first year don't worry about making a GREAT film. Just make a film.
  • Sketch
  • Make a portfolio, portfolio
  • Don't pull the "all-nighter" just to pull the "all-nighter"
  • Schedule in Breaks
  • Take an english 101 class
  • To get anything done with administration you need to ask more than three times.

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