Tony M. DiTerlizzi[1] (born September 6, 1969) is an American fantasy artist, children's book creator, and motion picture producer.

Illustrators such as Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac, Kay Nielsen and Ernest Shepard all had an impact, as well as author/illustrators like Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein and Richard Scarry.

[7] Upon graduating, DiTerlizzi moved to New York with his wife Angela and began a freelance illustration career working for TSR's Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.

[10] DiTerlizzi continued to work for TSR, as well as White Wolf Publishing's Changeling and Werewolf Storyteller games, and illustrated many cards for Magic,[3] Blood Wars and Rage.

[3] The first project where he both wrote and illustrated a book was the 2000 publication Jimmy Zangwow's Out-of-this-World Moon Pie Adventure,[11] followed in 2001, by Ted, which received the 2002 Zena Sutherland Award.

Mary Howitt's classic poem The Spider and the Fly, which became a New York Times Best Seller, was his next project[12] and for which he was awarded the 2003 Caldecott Honor Medal.

In 2005, Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You was published, with Paramount Pictures releasing a live-action movie adaptation of the series, DiTerlizzi acting as co-executive producer.

Tony stands alone as a world creator and a weaver of tales, may you treasure these art pieces as much as I do,” quoted Guillermo del Toro.

To this point, D&D (and therefore the rest of the fantasy-minded folks in the industry) were escalating a sort of clean tightly rendered, and classical realism.

He goes back farther for his inspirations, to the golden age of illustrators ... Like all of those artists, his work has elements of realism, but also leaves plenty of space for the whimsy and emotion afforded to the cartoonish and strange.