Dracopedia - The Bestiary: An Artist's Guide to Creating Mythical Creatures

Description

Unleash the Beasts! For millennia historians, artists and scientists have chronicled their ideas and discoveries of mythological and magical monsters in encyclopedias known as bestiaries. From Asia to America, Japan to the jungles of South Africa, the vast menagerie of exotic and legendary creatures has populated the imaginations of all cultures for centuries. Beautifully illustrated and fantastically detailed, Dracopedia- The Bestiary is a modern, but no less unsettling reimagining of the ancient version. It is an A-to-Z artist's guide to animals of the legendary world. Some, like the griffin and yeti, may be familiar to you. Others--like the enigmatic questing beast and ferocious manticore--may seem new and strange. Some may even haunt your dreams. Inside the bestiary, you will find- .Secrets of each animal's evolution--origins, habitat, anatomy, diet and more. .Fantastic illustrations created using pencil sketches and digital coloring. .Four-stage demonstrations taking you from concept and design to under-painting and finishing details. By drawing on the forms and features of more pedestrian animals, you'll learn how to give shape to the bizarre creatures that roam the depths of your imagination, adding to the bestiary of the ages.

William O'Connor is an illustrator, concept artist, fine artist and teacher. He has executed more than 3,000 illustrations for companies such as Wizards of the Coast, Blizzard Entertainment, Lucasfilm, HarperCollins and Activision. He has won over thirty awards for his artwork and received four Chesley nominations. He is a member of the Graphic Artists Guild, the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists, and the American Showcase of Illustration. O'Connor is the author of IMPACT's best-selling Dracopedia books and his work has appeared in six editions of the Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art series. Visit his website, wocstudios.com.