Digital Artistry

Web designer by day, artistic superhero by night

February 17, 2009

Digital artist Tim Lantz displays examples of his fantastical art (onscreen).

A stroll into Web manager/designer Tim Lantz's 50 Mooreland office is like a blast into another dimension. Posters of fearless superheroes, sci-fi sirens and fantastical creatures beckon from all angles as comic-book figurines strike majestic poses on the desk. It's as if he has sliced out his own sliver of reality, creating a place where work and fantasy collide.

In a sense, he has. This webmaster also is a digital artist who has created atmospheric, otherworldly fantasy art for book covers, DC Comics trading cards, a CD cover, a magazine illustration and a deck of tarot cards.

It's an impressive portfolio—and one that enhances his creativity at Dickinson.

A formally trained fine artist with degrees in art education and communications, Lantz uses graphics software to assemble striking electronic pieces that, at first glance, appear to be hand painted.

He begins by taking a carefully posed photograph of a live model. Using Photoshop, Lantz then systematically adds layers of images, colors and textures to the digital photo. "I might add swirls of hair, clothing, makeup, backgrounds and pieces of other photos," he explains. "It's almost like a collage."

It's a painstaking process that can take up to 15 hours. The result is a heavily worked, darkly dreamy piece that incorporates references to mythology and literature and draws stylistic elements from art-nouveau and Renaissance works.

"It's like an illustration for a story that hasn't been written," Lantz describes. "I like viewers to make up their own backstories."

Sometimes, however, they don't need to. Lantz's evocative images have appeared on the covers of 37 fantasy books, including novels published by Ace Books (a division of Penguin), Bantam (a division of Random House) and Juno (a division of Simon & Schuster).

To create a cover for a soon-to-be-published book, Lantz reads an excerpt of the manuscript to glean a sense of the plot. Then he works to create a design that pops.

"Ultimately, I want to make a good piece of art that speaks to me, but also does service to the author," he notes. "If I don't do a good job, maybe someone's great book will be overlooked."

Three years ago, Lantz combined the roles of illustrator and author when he penned an interpretive booklet to accompany a tarot card deck he designed.

Lantz, who had been fascinated with tarot images as a teenager, says he had created a handful of tarot-themed illustrations "just for fun." At a friend's urging, he submitted the designs to a card-game publisher.

"The next thing I knew, I had an advance and a year to finish the full set of cards and book," he says. "I bought myself a camera, enlisted some models and got to work."

During the last three years, his 78-card deck has been sold in 27 countries. "I get fan mail from Korea," he says.

His greatest artistic moment arrived when he created artwork for DC Comics.

An avid collector who snagged his first comic book, The Mighty Thor, at age 8, Lantz had placed himself on the legendary publisher's radar by selling prints of his artwork at comic-book conventions (known as Comic-Cons).

"My first Comic-Con was in Baltimore in 2005, and you would not believe how well it went," he says. "A group of Maryland Institute of Art students didn't leave me alone."

Several conventions later, Lantz got his big break.

"At [a comic-book convention] in Philadelphia a guy walked by, saw my art, said a couple of derogatory things about Photoshop and left. Two days later, he sent me an e-mail saying he was with DC Comics and he wanted me to do some cards for them," he remembers.

Over time, Lantz designed six superhero trading cards for DC Comics, including one depicting one of his favorite characters, Silver Banshee.

"That was one of the greatest things I've done in my life," says Lantz.

He adds that the inspiration he gains through his creative projects keeps him fresh as he designs Web sites for Dickinson College.

"When you commit to a certain style, there's a danger that eventually you won't see any other [stylistic] possibilities," Lantz explains. "[My artwork] is quite different from what we're doing at Dickinson. It allows me to see my work at Dickinson in a different way and bring outside elements in."

And so, like the superheroes he idolized as a kid, Lantz lives out a double life, working hard on the Dickinson Web site by day and exploring and expanding his artistic vision of the world by night.

He says that although the art is hard work, it is satisfying.

"I think that even if people don't know anything about art or mythology, they can appreciate the fact that my images are pretty," he says. "A lot of times people dismiss pretty pictures, but I think there's a need for beauty in the world."

To view Timothy Lantz’s artwork, visit his online gallery at www.timothylantz.com.