Thomas Canty Fantasy Art Trading Cards, box front
Thomas Canty Fantasy Art Trading Cards are collectible cards released in 1996 by FPG featuring the artwork of illustrator Thomas Canty. Ninety cards were released in total; five of the cards feature Canty's artwork from the U.S. Avon editions of Redwall, Mossflower, Mattimeo, and Mariel of Redwall by Brian Jacques. One card refers to each of the first three listed books, while Mariel of Redwall receives two cards, one for the front cover piece and one for the back cover. Enumerated, the cards are 73, 74, 75, 76, and 77 of the 90-card series.
The cards were originally released in 10-packs. The front of each card displayed artwork, while the back provided musings from Canty on the time he spent creating the art, as well as an unrelated sketch or illustration.
The cards for Mossflower (#74), Mattimeo (#75), and Gabool the Wild (#76) contain printing errors. The card with the Mossflower cover artwork is identified as "Mattimeo" while the card with the Mattimeo cover artwork is identified as "Mossflower." The accompanying descriptive text correctly applies to the artwork's title. The Gabool the Wild card mispells Gabool as "Cabool."
Thomas Canty Fantasy Art Trading Cards, box back
Official Description[]
Over the past fifteen years, Thomas Canty has become one of the most accomplished and influential fantasy artists in the field.
According to colleague Terri Windling, Canty's fantasy art portrays a lifelong commitment to Romanticism and the expression of Romantic ideals, through the medium of modern book arts.
After earning an art and teaching degree at the Massachusetts College of Art, Canty began creating book covers during the early 1980's. The soft-colored, understated iconographic painting style favored by Canty presents a mood, an icon, and a symbol that is intended to capture the flavor of the text.
During the mid-eighties, Canty created two children's book series of his own, and began the work he is still known best for outside the fantasy genre: creating modernistic, cutting-edge book designs which manipulate reproductive and computer generation techniques to a unique effect.
Never before have so many of Canty's best works been collected in one place. For the first time ever, fantasy fans will be able to see 90 of Thomas Canty's greatest works represented in his inaugural fantasy art trading card series, produced by FPG. A wide variety of Canty's art work has been reproduced for this landmark series, including romantic fantasy, as well as reproductions of book covers from novels by famous authors, such as Stephen King, Michael Moorcock and Peter Straub. As an added bonus, randomly inserted within packs will be one of 1,000 Autographed cards and one of five different metallic cards, which display a radically different version of Thomas Canty art.
See Also[]
- This item was featured in the Redwall Collectors Community series.