Comics and music industry

Who's Zoo, a bootleg recording of The Who with cover artwork by William Stout.

In 1973 Stout began drawing album covers for the Trademark of Quality bootleg record label. He created 42 sleeves for the label and its subsidiaries,^[2] including the Rolling Stones' All-Meat Music (his first), the Yardbirds' Golden Eggs and More Golden Eggs, and the Who's Who's Zoo and Tales from the Who. He became associated with the Firesign Theatre, and designed his first official album cover, In the Next World, You're on Your Own, in 1974.^[3]

From 1975 to 1977 Stout worked as art director for the rock magazine Bomp! During this time, he became one of the first American contributors to Heavy Metal magazine. He continued to work occasionally designing posters and album sleeves. These included the poster for Rock 'n' Roll High School featuring the Ramones in 1979, the controversial cover for the compilation album Beatlesongs in 1981,^[4][5][6][7] and the cover for The Smithereens Play Tommy in 2009.^[3]

Film and television

In 1977 Stout painted his first movie poster, for Ralph Bakshi's film Wizards. During his career, Stout has worked on the advertising for over 120 films.

In 1978, with Buck Rogers, Stout began his film production design career. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Stout and fellow illustrator Richard Hescox ran a Los Angeles art studio, working on such projects as the storyboards for Raiders of the Lost Ark and pop singer Michael Jackson's video Thriller. Fellow cartoonist Dave Stevens worked for a time in the same studio.^[8]

Stout has worked on over thirty feature films, including both 1980s Conan films, First Blood, The Hitcher, and Invaders from Mars. He was also the production designer of the Masters of the Universe film.

Stout illustrated the poster art and wrote the story (and the first draft of the script) of the film The Warrior and the Sorceress for Roger Corman, as well as writing a never-produced dinosaur feature for Jim Henson. For Industrial Light & Magic in 1996, he designed "Edgar", the big bug in Men in Black. Stout was the key character designer for the computer-animated feature Dinosaur (released in 2000). Stout worked as the conceptual designer for The Muppets' Wizard of Oz, and key designer for Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. Recent film work includes Christopher Nolan's film The Prestige and creature design for Frank Darabont's & Stephen King's The Mist. He is slated to work on del Toro's At the Mountains of Madness as well as a proposed John Carter of Mars film.

Paleontological art

In 1981 Bantam Books published Stout's landmark masterwork The Dinosaurs: A Fantastic New View of a Lost Era (recently updated and re-published as The New Dinosaurs). In 1983, Stout was among those who illustrated Ray Bradbury's Dinosaur Tales. In 1984 he illustrated The Little Blue Brontosaurus, which was a 1984 Children's Choice Award recipient and the basis for the 1988 animated feature The Land Before Time.

In 1986, as a result of his paleontological reconstruction work, eleven Stout paintings were selected for inclusion in the traveling exhibition "Dinosaurs Past and Present," an important group show depicting the history of paleoart. The six-year tour included (among others) the Smithsonian Institution, British Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History.

In 1993, Universal Cartoon Studios chose Stout to design a prime-time animated series of Jurassic Park, which was ultimately shelved.^[9]

Also in 1993 Comic Images released William Stout's Lost Worlds, the first of three trading card sets.

Entertainment design

Beginning in 1987, Stout worked for Walt Disney Imagineering for a year and a half as a conceptualist, designer, and producer for Euro Disneyland, Disneyland, Tokyo Disneyland, and Walt Disney World. In 1989 he was hired by Lucasfilm/Industrial Light and Magic as conceptualist and chief designer for their first foray into themed entertainment centers. In 1991 Stout conceived and designed ZZ Top's Recycler tour. In 1994 Stout continued theme park attraction creation and design for MCA/Universal's Islands of Adventure. In late 1995, Steven Spielberg chose Stout as his senior concept designer for GameWorks, a Sega/Universal/DreamWorks SKG joint project. For two years Stout and his team oversaw the concepts, design, and execution of the first three GameWorks facilities in Seattle, Washington; Tempe, Arizona; and Ontario, California). Stout worked in 1998-1999 as the lead designer for Kansas City's Wonderful World of Oz theme park (which unfortunately was never developed). He was also a designer for Michael Jackson's private Neverland Ranch theme park.

Illustration

In 2001, Stout illustrated Richard Matheson's first children's book, Abu & The 7 Marvels, which won many awards. The Stout-illustrated book The Emerald Wand of Oz was released in 2005, followed by Trouble Under Oz in 2006. Stout's own publishing company, Terra Nova Press, has published thirty-four books on art and the history of art.

In 2013, he prepared and illustrated Legends of the Blues, a book comprising portraits of classic blues musicians, intended as a sequel to fellow cartoonist Robert Crumb's book Heroes of Blues, Jazz and Country.^[3]