illustration

Costuming can bring a character design to new heights. You always have to wonder what type of person has time to assemble a leopard-spotted pink mohawk or would think to pair a double-breasted jacket and cowgirl boots with skeleton makeup...

Fantasy sequences can lend themselves to a sense of clutter, of swords clashing over battle cries, of crowds of grumbling monsters, of nefarious creatures scuttling through the woodwork. Tim Durning sometimes portrays that mystical chaos, but he also finds the quieter moments in his fantasy illustrations, moments where the only sound evoked is the wind rustling through tree branches...

Long before superheroes walked upon pulpy paper pages, tall tales provided Americans with their requisite dose of superhuman exploits. Slue-Foot Sue was one such superlady, a cowgirl strong enough to wrangle a giant catfish and win the heart of Pecos Bill, and whose wedding-day bustle bounced her all the way to the moon...

Many of Jon Boam's characters sport animal heads or conical hats straight out of David the Gnome. But his fascination with otherworldly architecture, his twists on conventional fantasy designs and his unsettling cyborg creations add a richer, darker note to his illustrations...

Using thick black lines and unexpected color combinations, South Korean artist Yong Oh Kim transforms already spectacular street scenes, landscapes and urban fashionistas into scenes from an extraterrestrial travelogue. Distant destinations become even more alien, although the blue and pink-skinned trendsetters look pretty friendly...

Katie Turner's illustrations are the grown-up versions of the doodles we all made in the margins of our school notebooks. Her deceptively simple characters, with their almond-shaped eyes and squiggly noses, stand in carefully blocked scenes, their hair and clothes revealing as much about their personalities as their subtle expressions...

The scenes in Rodrigo Aviles' paintings and illustrations are often unnerving. Ghostly swordswomen float over the sleeping world. Courtly figures are transformed into psychedelic mushrooms. Abstract animals and people with demonic faces stand their two-dimensional ground...

"Historical accuracy" and "Disney princesses" aren't usually two concepts that go together. But that hasn't stopped concept artist Claire Hummel from injected a little fact into those fictional characters, at least where their clothes are concerned...

Batman may be the hero we associate most with darkness, but these illustrations by Bunka, a.k.a. Yann Le Nevé, show that a well-placed shadow can lend any character a touch of menace. DC superfolks, Marvel characters and Ninja Turtles all feel the weight of Bunka's mighty blacks, but so do his own characters: furry creatures that are adorable at first glance, only to prove terrifying as their true

Marcelo Gallegos may draw monsters, but there's nothing ugly about his watercolor-tinged illustrations. Whether he's drawing the Easter Bunny as Cthulhu, the piranha plants from Super Mario Bros. or his own wind-up creature designs, Gallegos shapes and colors each image as if preparing them for an elaborately illustrated storybook...