Sunday, March 23, 2008

Beasts!





















































A few weeks ago, Fantagraphics found themselves short one entry for their forthcoming book BEASTS! BOOK TWO, the follow-up to their amazing book, BEASTS! a compendium of mythological and cryptozoological creatures of every sort depicted by a very wide range of talented artists. To fill this opening in the second book, they put out an open call for artists to submit an image of a not previously (in either book) depicted beast.

Even though I was bogged down with other projects, I couldn't resist. I was already immersed in just this sort of material for SCOOBY-DOO and a forthcoming other project, so it seemed like something I needed to do. For my submissions, I chose the jackalope, the Australian half-man, half-emu Dhinnabarrada, and the giant bird, the Roc.

I had no expectations that one of my submissions would be selected for inclusion in the book, and none of them were. There were over 200 entries submitted for this slot, all done in a wide range of styles and all with great skill. You can read more about BEASTS! BOOK TWO here which also displays many of the submitted entries, and browse the flickr pool of submitted pieces here.

Congratulations to Jennifer Tong, whose winning entry for "Nymph" can be seen here.

5 comments:

Steven Altis said...

'Nymph' is very nice, but how could anything have beat a chocolate Easter jackalope? Brilliant!

Robert Pope said...

I always dug the Roc the mostest. Good job, pal!

Stephen said...

Since when are nymphs beasts anyway? Sorry you didn't win, John, but there's always volume 3!

John Rozum said...

Thanks, guys. I had no expectations of winning, but any excuse to put together pictures of weird creatures is okay with me.

Max the drunken severed head said...

I second Steven A.'s "Brilliant!" comment!