As Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse rejoins the Dungeons & Dragons universe, updated for 5th Edition, there is one name that is forever linked with this fantastically weird world; Tony DiTerlizzi. Players of the original Planescape of the 90s will remember DiTerlizzi’s unique art style, bringing the strange denizens of Sigil and the Outlands to life. In a world where all the other Planes of DnD meet and intermingle, Planescape has its own feel and philosophy where devils, angels and modrons all exist side by side.
Tony DiTerlizzi is a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator, best known for creating The Spiderwick Chronicles, as well as his art for Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering. Alongside children’s books such as Kenny and The Dragon and The Search for WondLa, DiTerlizzi has also worked with Star Wars to retell the original trilogy in illustrated form.
Screen Rant sat down with Tony DiTierlizzi to discuss his return to Planescape, his artistic influences when creating the look for the setting and the sharing the experience of DnD with his daughter.
Screen Rant: Being the primary illustrator for Planescape for over 10 years means that you and your style are intrinsically linked with the setting. How does that feel being so indelibly part of Planescape?
Tony DiTerlizzi: I remember flying up to TSR, who was publishing Dungeons & Dragons at the time, they were in Wisconsin and I had already done some work for them on their first colorized version of the Monster Manual and another box set. They had created other expansions to the DnD world like Spelljammer and Dark Sun and Ravenloft and stuff like that. So when I flew up and Zeb Cook, who was the lead game designer on it, and Zeb’s legendary; he created some of the original modules and stuff, back in the 70s and 80s. And he kind of was explaining it to me. Now we would say, “it’s the multiverse!” But in 1993 he had to really sit me down and explain what that meant because it just, I couldn’t get my head around that concept.
So I think when we embarked on it, I don’t think any of us thought it would have any lasting power because it was so strange. He collected the team, the designers, Colin McComb and later Monte Cook and Ray Vallese. They collected the weird out of Dungeons & Dragons, like the modrons, which had been kind of forgotten. And the renaming of the devils and the demons and that all became like Dante’s Inferno and you could go and explore the inferno.
It was so at once epic but also again just, like a Hieronymus Bosch painting almost to me. It was like “no one’s going to play”, I just thought it’s just so out there. I love it! It totally appeals to my aesthetic which, to your question, had a more lasting impact than I would have ever guessed. But here we are and if you are a 5th Edition player then you know what a modron is and probably you have played or know people who’ve played tieflings, which came from this genesis.
As a gamer myself, but growing up in the 80s, and playing Dungeons & Dragons I look at [it] like, “oh this is the first ever drawing of a beholder or an owlbear!” And to think that, the tieflings, that I did the first published drawings of those is strange. I just wanted them, meaning the team, to just be happy with the work that I had done.
But TSR had done sole artists on projects before, so I think Brom had been the sole illustrator on Dark Sun when they launched Dark Sun. And Stephen Fabian might have been the original illustrator for Ravenloft when they launched Ravenloft. So I understood what they were going after with hiring me to do it. I guess I thought after I did the initial box set then more artists would come in and that wasn’t the case. [Laughs]
I was pedal to the metal for, oh my gosh, at least five years. It was just nonstop, just me working on, it was just one project after the other. We were going so fast that for the first couple of projects I didn’t even do preliminary sketches. I just did final art.
Yes, I saw in an interview that you talked about that you went straight to final art.
Tony DiTerlizzi: So what happened was they had this released date. We’ve solicited this release date, this is the release date we’re doing. And then the designers were like: “We need a little more time. Some mechanics are still ongoing, we need a little more time.” [The release date] doesn’t change! Then it was, oh you can get started now. So the time that I would have had was shaved off by a serious amount of time. It was like a blessing and curse because they were like: “You’re going to be the only illustrator.” Wow! That’s amazing. However, you have to get it all done, it’s due tomorrow, kind of thing.
So that was the thing we came up with and I just said if you let me, just let me cook! Let me just go and do it. And if you don’t like the art, send it back, tell me what’s wrong with it. I’ll fix it and return it. But in all the years, I don’t think they ever sent a piece back. I just went nuts. I figured out how to work for them, I’d figured out what they needed, I’d grown and matured as an illustrator. I was better, somewhat better, at keeping my deadlines and really minding my time. So that the deadline didn’t bottleneck at the end. I was 24, 25 years old, I was hell of wheels.
Because with the original you went straight to final art, this time around you were hopefully given a bit more time.
Tony DiTerlizzi: [Laughs] It was the same thing again! It was! They were very accommodating, don’t get me wrong, the team at Wizards of the Coast were very accommodating. But they had asked me about [Planescape] early last year and I said well yeah, I would love to be a part of it. Actually, if we rewind a couple of years earlier there was talk about it then and really at that point the conversation I was having with the art director then was more of how to do I teach and hand off to the team. Here’s what we looked at, here’s what inspired us, here’s why if I reverse engineer it why I think it worked. Let me help you, then here’s the keys to the castle, here’s the keys to Sigil. Go and have fun.
But it got shelved for a couple of years and then they contacted me early last year. But with two of my books in active production, with The Spiderwick Chronicles and then the WondLa animated series for Apple, I was like I really want to do this but… Initially, those were both set to release now. They were both supposed to release in the fall, so we were closing in on wrapping up a lot of stuff. And I’m like, I don’t know if I can get the art done that you need. By the time they called me late in the summer last year I was in the middle of illustrating my wife’s picture book, plus we were getting ready to wrap on Spiderwick and WondLa was hitting… I was like argh! It was crazy. It was a lot of things happening, everything everywhere all at once.
So I just jumped right in and I started it, I started October 1st of last year. And unlike before, a lot of sketches, a lot of feedback. It’s different than it was in 1990. In 1990, it was two or three people had to look at it, maybe there’s two or three people who look at it now but it’s teams led by two or three people. They turn the notes around quick enough but there were notes. Like, the githyanki look different now than they did back in the 90s. So can you make them more like someone would play them. I drew them more like a ghoul, they’re more ghoulish because I was thinking of the ones I grew up with. Things like that. But I got it all done and here we are.
So getting that feedback, how have the designs evolved from your original pieces?
Tony DiTerlizzi: Well, the questions we had early on, that I had for the Wizards team, was: who is this for and how do you want to reach that audience? Immediately they were like, look we’re brining you back on, we want to reach the original players who played the game and collected it throughout the 90s. Okay. In fact, they were like, we’d love for you to use the same tools that you used, art tools and mediums. The pen and ink, the watercolor, that kind of stuff that you used back in the 90s so it feels, you know? Okay. That sounds exciting, that sounds fun. But they were like, we’ve redesigned some of the characters of the course of the years so maybe reflect what the current iteration of the creatures and so on look like.
So I looked at the redesign of the Lady of Pain, I looked at the redesign of the githyanki, the slaad, there’s a slaad in there. I mean, the modrons looks pretty such the same from my redesign back in 93. So it was just incorporating, a kind of hybridized. I told them if I made it look exactly like 5th Edition that I think the core OG Planescape people would be like, meh. But if I could somehow hybridize and synthesize the two generations, maybe that would work.
So that’s what I tried to do. Was look at, here’s what it looks like now in 5th Edition, here’s what it looked like back in the day and kind of give everyone a glow up a little bit. Most of the characters in the Dungeon Master’s screen are all homages to key things that I drew back in the day, back in the 90s. So my goal was like a Sgt. Pepper’s album concept cover of like: “oh that’s that one and that’s that, oh I know who that is!” So if you were an original, if you’re a new gamer you’re just like oh cool that’s a city with a bunch of characters. But you’re an original player you’d be like I know who that is, I know who that is, I know where that is, I know what that is, that kind of thing. That’s what I was shooting for.
I know you’re a big Star Wars fan, do you think that has influenced the way you approach Planescape? With it being sort of the DnD equivalent of Mos Eisley, I think I’ve heard it compared to.
Tony DiTerlizzi: Oh that’s interesting! You know, now that you say that, sure yeah. Really though, more Coruscant I think. Really, because it’s so big, Sigil is. Star Wars has influenced so much of my life but when I think of the inspirations for Planescape Star Wars is not among them. The original, original designs and inspirations were a staff artist named Dana Knutson who was working with Zeb [Cook] and was sketching out the original versions of the Lady of Pain, the tieflings, some of those key characters in the line. Definitely the architecture, he was excellent at rendering all the architecture. That spiky, sickle shaped, barbed architecture.
I remember this so distinctly, Zeb showing me the work of Yoshitaka Amano who had been, at that time, was primarily working on Final Fantasy. And so looking at Amano’s artwork was like, I’d never seen it before. This is pre-internet really, comic-con and places like that were very small. So to come across Japanese published collections of his work, you had to go to Japan to get them. You weren’t going to get them here in the States. So [Zeb] had come back from Japan and was like, look at this. And I was like, so amazing to look at his art. He was a huge influence early on.
And then for myself, I’ve always looked at the golden age illustrators from the turn of the century. Like Arthur Rackham and Ernest Shepard and W. Heath Robinson and so many amazing legendary British illustrators that I grew up with and adored. And of course, no mistake that Brian Froud and Alan Lee, again being a kid of the 70s and 80s, so the Faeries books and the Dark Crystal and Labyrinth! All that stuff was super informative. And I think, again coming out of the 80s, the only Hobbit I knew was the Rankin/Bass animated Hobbit and The Black Cauldron was a Disney movie and the best video game in the world was, at the arcade, was Dragon’s Lair. So animation had clearly, and Disney was going through the Renaissance at the time that I started Planescape, so there’s certainly a bit of Disney and animation in general that kind of exaggeration in a lot of it. It’s a stew, is what I’m saying. A soup.
Just like Sigil then?
Tony DiTerlizzi: I couldn’t have said it better. I should have said that, but you said it. And yes, you’re right. That’s exactly it.
What was it like returning to the Planescape?
Tony DiTerlizzi: A bit daunting. Only because I wanted… it was a tall order. And my heart was, what would the fans who have followed me for all these years want? What would they feel was… I knew I wasn’t going to be able to illustrate the books, I was just going to be able to do these alternate covers and this Dungeon Master screen. Which I thought, okay that’s a big meal, that’s a lot to do. And I love that it was being offered only in friendly local gaming shops, I thought that also appeals to the people we’re trying to sell to.
I just really think about I’ve been doing this for 30 years, I’ve been doing children’s books for over 20 years now and I’m always blown away when I’m at a bookstore for 10-year-olds and someone comes in line and plops down all their Planescape stuff, or their Magic cards. It’s very meaningful to me that they’ve been fans for that long. And that they would sit through a book reading for five-year-olds [laughs] to get their Planescape stuff signed. That’s just awesome. It’s amazing. So I really didn’t want to let them down. That’s really first and foremost what was driving me. Was to make something that celebrated the amazing world that Zeb and his team had created way back when. But also appeal to the people who had kept it popular for all these years.
You talked before about the weirdness of Planescape and how that appealed to you. What are some of your favorite aspects of the setting?
Tony DiTerlizzi: Well, the first thing that Zeb told me was that it was spiky and rusty. He wanted everything to feel like it was eons old. Really ancient. Even the armor. The clothes were supposed to be kind of tattered and worn, the armor should be rusty and corroded, the buildings would be corroded and falling apart. And so that, there’s your Star Wars right there, that’s very much a Star Wars aesthetic. But also at the time you didn’t see that much in Dungeons & Dragons, most everything was pretty slick. You know, the paintings of characters were, we were coming again out of the 80s, so they were brightly colored paintings. Bright colors, wizards had bright robes, and everyone’s hair was brushed and styled. I think the only exception that comes to mind was obviously Brom’s work on Dark Sun which was definitely more rugged and rusted.
This was definitely more like the Robert Smith/Cure aesthetic. [Laughs] It was make it gothy, make it weird, make it just a place that once you see it you’re either in or you’re out. You’re like, what’s up with that? And the question I asked was does a character when they leave the Prime Material Plane, our reality, and go into Planescape do they physically become more exaggerated and kind of cartoony? And his answer was yes, they do become more exaggerated. That was part of it. You are in a multiverse, you’re in a different reality. And I just thought that was so fricking cool! That was just so different to me that he was thinking of how my natural art aesthetic would work in part of the game. Really interesting.
Do you have any favorite designs from this new version of Planescape?
Tony DiTerlizzi: I like the update to the Lady of Pain, the main character. First of all, I thought Tyler Jacobson did an amazing job painting the broad release, the cover is amazing, it’s beautiful. He did a fantastic job. He’s a great artist. I liked the new version, I was excited when they sent it over. I thought, oh this is cool. I liked it. I mean the other one existed, it was great, it was fantastic, it’s iconic but it was nice to, you know, it’s a different audience, different generation. So I liked doing that. I liked merging the two designs together.
I love a modron. [Laughs] Who doesn’t? The BB-8s, see you’ve got Star Wars in my head now. The BB-8s, the power droids, the gonk droids of Planescape. I’m just blown away that they haven’t been totally redone. I guess that’s a testament to the design. It’s crazy.
Just before we go, I know you’ve been a big DnD since you were younger and you still play. What are some of your favorite adventures?
Tony DiTerlizzi: Ok, so what I wanted to do was have a shared experience with my daughter. She’s 16 now. We haven’t played in about a year or so because she in Junior High, she’s busy. She’s more busy than I am. But what I wanted was to go through the original modules that I went through as a kid so that we had that shared experience. So we played The Keep on the Borderlands, we played The Ghost Tower of Inverness, we played Tomb of the Unknown. I mean, if you grew up in the 80s and you bought the Dungeons & Dragons, the little box set, it came with The Keep on the Borderlands. And that was a huge adventure, because you had The Caves of Chaos then you had the Keep, then there was the swamps. There was all this stuff you could go and do and then you kept coming back to the Keep, it’s kind of your home base.
So to have played that when I was 12 or 13 and then to run it for my family and friends and have that experience with my daughter was just irreplaceable for me. So amazing to be able to experience that with her. So we mostly play 2nd Edition because I know it inside and out. We have played 5th Edition before, I play with a friend of mine, Scott Fischer, who’s also an artist. He’s done a lot of Magic cards and he’s done work for Dungeons & Dragons as well. And Scott will run the 5th [games], he knows the 5th Edition rules really well. So we’ll occasionally take a break and he’ll run a 5th Edition game, which is fun.
