He painted more than 70 covers for science fiction and fantasy paperback novels, and he created several stamp designs for the US Postal Service, most notably The World of Dinosaurs in 1996. Gurney's freelance illustration career began in the 1980s, during which time he developed his characteristic realistic renderings of fantastic scenes, painted in oil using methods similar to the academic realists and Golden Age illustrators.

Gurney and Kinkade also worked as painters of background scenes for the animated film Fire and Ice, co-produced by Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta. Prompted by a cross-country adventure on freight trains, he and Thomas Kinkade coauthored The Artist’s Guide to Sketching in 1982. He then studied illustration at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California for a couple of semesters. He studied archaeology at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving a BA in Anthropology with Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1979. James Gurney grew up in Palo Alto, California, the youngest of five children of Joanna and Robert Gurney, a mechanical engineer.Įncouraged to tinker in the workshop, he built puppets, gliders, masks, and kites, and taught himself to draw by means of books about the illustrators Howard Pyle and Norman Rockwell. Gurney, who also taught himself how to draw, also worked with animation icon Ralph Bakshi for a time, prior to writing Dinotopia. The dinosaur Torvosaurus gurneyi was named in honour of Gurney in 2014. He also holds as BA in anthropology, and even has a dinosaur species named in his honor. and yet its illustrations, worldbuilding, and visuals have largely inspired both George Lucas's Star Wars (from the prequel trilogy to the present-day Disney helmship), and even James Cameron's Avatarįor those unaware, Dinotopia, or Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time, was originally a book written, and illustrated, by James Gurney, an artist who also studied archaeology and anthropology. It seems, to my knowledge, that the work Dinotopia is relatively obscure.

Dinotopia movie 2002