Dinotopia
A Land Apart from Time
by James Gurney · first published 1992
25% recommend75% neutral
Professor Denison, the intrepid 19th-century explorer, is back! Some time ago, the professor discovered a lost island where humans and dinosaurs dwell in harmony. Now the professor and Bix, his dinosaur companion, have been summoned to the forbidden empire of Chandara. But when they lose their invitation from the emperor, the adventurers must cross the border penniless and in disguise. A vivid narrative, accompanied by enchanting illustrations, traces their journey and its spectacular sights: a village composed of three ships propped up on end, a 50-foot-tall Brachiosaurus outfitted for fir
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…a bunch of art books about famous artists on the shelf: Davinci, Michelangelo, Van Gogh, etc. - Narnia series by C.S. Lewis. They also make a graphic novel of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. - Dinotopia by James Gurney There's a lot I'm leaving out but those are a good start. I'd also look for recs from mom-and-pop bookstores and your child's school if you are able.
on “AI is coming for your children” ↗…Illustration. It's full of all kinds of filtering tricks. For a more modern book, James Gurney's Color and Light and Imaginative Realism are both quite good. You can also pick up a copy of one of his Dinotopia books, it won't help designing graphics, but, hey, dinosaurs. Right? (He also has an excellent website: http://gurneyjourney.blogspot.com/) Gradients and ramps are useful, both to break up large flat…
on “Pixel-fitting – how antialiasing can ruin your logos and icons” ↗Artists have for the longest time used our brains ability to upscale. Many paintings, even ones that seem super detailed like those by James Gurney in his Dinotopia series, will have blobs in the background. Our brain will recognize based on silhouette and shape an extraordinary amount of detail that isn’t actually there. Detail such as the type of clothing and the…
on “Using Stable Diffusion's img2img on some old Sierra titles” ↗In James Gurney's Dinotopia, humanity is described as imagining time as a line, whereas dinosaurs imagine it as a circle. They compromise and teach a single cohesive theory of "time as a helix" to both saurian and simian children.…
on “This is what the year actually looks like (2018)” ↗