See below for the Florida Arts and Education Association's Fresh Paint interview between Tom Prestopnik and Tony DiTerlizzi!
TP: Let's go back to the beginning. I personally know mom, Carole, and younger siblings Jennifer and Adam, and I am aware of their great creativity in whatever they do. How far back can you remember your mom doing creative ''workshops'' or games with you and what were some of those activities?
TD: My mom has painted, drawn, and sewn for as long as I can remember. One of our favorite crafts when I was young was making cutout paper dolls with wooden clothespins for legs. We made all sorts of characters, animals, and dinosaurs. I recall treasuring my homemade set of dolls from the show, ‘Gilligan’s Island’.
We always had coloring books in the house, too. Mom’s rule was, “if you finish coloring the book, I’ll buy you a new one.” I was that kid who would diligently color every single page. When I think back on that now, it’s not much different than my workflow today: finish creating this book and you can start a new one.
TP: Did the three DiTerlizzi kids play together inside the house doing creative things?
TD: We did. All three of us grew up around the creative force that was our mom and so we all learned to express ourselves in artistic ways. Also, because we were a middle-class family growing up in the 1970s-80s, we used our imagination a lot for play. We didn’t have the distraction of modern-day devices, the television was only on in the evening, and we certainly did not own every popular toy. Often, we’d figure out how to make do with what we had or create our own games and play—we’d sew Star Wars costumes from old clothes, I’d create vast dioramas with my plastic dinosaurs and we filmed a stop motion movie using my brother’s Transformers toys. It was a glorious time.
TP: Did you act as a teacher or a mentor to them, and did they influence you in any way with your thought process?
TD: If I taught them, it may have been through example but not consciously so. Growing up with a brother and sister certainly influenced how I think of story. I’ve been inspired by my brother, Adam, many times throughout my life. His passion for comic books, films and animation, at a very young age, is contagious.
When I rewind to my senior year in high school, it was Adam who was working on a book report for Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ that planted a seed in my brain of pursuing a career illustrating children’s books. That certainly became a pivotal moment in my life.
TP: Living in South Florida, where it's ''summer'' year 'round, you spent a lot of time outside in the woods, swamps and at the beach and it must have had a large influence on your early sketches and studies. Many of your characters have a ''woodsy'' or ''vegetative'' appearance and feel to them. Comment on that statement and then how would your drawings and paintings differ if you grew up living in Maine or Alaska and pretty much home-bound for too many months of the year?
TD: I have been fascinated with nature since I caught my first grasshopper in the backyard. As a Boy Scout, I enjoyed fishing, hiking, camping and exploring the various environments throughout the state of Florida. The biodiversity there is unmatched and I feel incredibly fortunate to have grown up surrounded by scrub pines, sandy beaches and verdant wetlands. I suppose I would have been just as inspired had I grown up somewhere else. And, even though the northern states (like Massachusetts, where we live now) hosts chilly winters that tend to keep me inside, Florida’s summers had the same effect on me. I spent many a sweltering summer day drawing in my bedroom under the cool breeze of a ceiling fan.
TP: Once away from mom you started getting more influences from your teachers, art and otherwise. I know each one, me included, left his or her mark on your personal artistic development. Since you will be talking to a group of 500-600 art teachers at our conference, talk about the influences some of these teachers had on you. And from your experience being the ''different'' student, how can these teachers help to accommodate their students who don't easily fit into the square peg? Please elaborate.
TD: I didn’t think I was “different” for most of my childhood. After all, lots of kids drew and created stories in elementary school and even middle school, but it was in high school that I realized the path I was on was one less traveled. Fortunately, as you mentioned, there were teachers along the way who helped and guided me.
My 5th grade teacher at Hobe Sound Elementary, Ray Strassburger, noticed I was having difficulty with reading comprehension as shown in my less-than-stellar book reports. This was because many of the required titles on our reading list had little to no illustrations. Consequently, I began reading loads of comic books instead. Realizing I am (obviously) a visual learner who loved to draw, Ray suggested I create drawings—illustrations—of my own design for the books that I was reading to accompany my book reports. This approach unlocked my comprehension skills, and I was on my way. It seemed a little hurdle to overcome at the time, but its impact would ripple throughout my life. For that, I am forever thankful to teachers like Ray.
TP: In a current book, "The Gift of Failure", Dan Bongino talks about all the times he failed in his life and how he kept getting stronger and learning more from his mistakes and failures. Give us some of the examples that you had growing up where you might have felt, at the time, that you had failed yourself and maybe your family.
TD: Being the “different” kid in high school (as you mentioned) equated me perceiving myself as an outlier in the social hierarchy and norms of a typical 1980s student body. I mean, are girls more interested in the charismatic jock, the cool surfer, the class president, or the artsy weirdo who aspires to one day write children’s books?
Because of that teenage insecurity, I was willing to risk anything if it meant I was accepted as being one of the “cool kids”. I was often entangled in ridiculous pranks and overall mayhem during my later years of high school, which accounted for me getting into my fair share of trouble with the school and my parents.
Eventually, my confidence grew, and I embraced my individuality, but it was tough during those late-teen years because I wasn’t in a locale where finding like-minded individuals was easy. After I graduated from art school, I realized I needed to be in New York City, publishing center of the world and home to loads of artists, writers and illustrators. There, I found a place where I felt I truly fit in and was thankful my then-girlfriend-now-wife Angela was willing to come on the ride with me.
TP: Dungeons and Dragons and other role-playing games were a big influence in your life, from your elementary and middle school days playing games to your post college career working for TSR and creating your own games and stories. I'm guessing that a lot of your fellow students laughed and pointed fingers at the geeks and nerds playing silly dice games. As Tobey Keith sings "How Do You Like Me Now?" Your comments.
TD: What truly astounds me is that role-playing games have come full circle and have become more popular than they were in the 1980s. There certainly was a time when gamers were thought of as bespectacled misfit nerds, but those days are history.
I worked with TSR (original publisher of Dungeons & Dragons) right out of art school and throughout the 1990s. Although I yearned to create children’s books, my experience working with the game designers expanded my understanding of story and world building. I learned to illustrate every aspect of these fantasy worlds: from the adventurers and monsters to the architecture and artifacts. ‘The Spiderwick Chronicles’ and ‘WondLa’ trilogy would not be what they are were it not for my time working on D&D.
TP: I'm guessing success came in various steps; a phone call from George Lucas, a Caldecott Award for the ''Spider and the Fly", a major motion picture in 2008 "The Spiderwick Chronicles'', and in the year 2024 with two television shows running in prime time. One can only imagine what is on the horizon. Please comment on these past successes. And are you able to talk about any new projects in the works?
TD: I have been fortunate to have many highlights in my career, garnered from a combination of surrounding myself with talented people, hard work, and luck. Each of these moments has felt like a dream-come-true though, honestly, it is an odd mix of excitement and unworthiness. I suppose that’s because I am so tapped into that 12-year-old version of myself that these moments seem like the far-off accomplishments of some famous artist, not me. Perhaps that keeps me grounded.
I am always in the process of storytelling, whether it’s dreaming up a new story, figuring out the characters and plot for another, writing, illustrating or out promoting my latest book. That is truly the realized dream for me: making a good living creating stories, just as I did when I was a kid.
