Robin Wood (artist)

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For other uses, see Robin Wood (disambiguation).

Robin Wood (born 1953) is a Michigan-based artist specializing in game art and fantasy. She is best known for her portraits of characters from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series and the Robin Wood Tarot Deck.

[edit] Biography

Robin Wood graduated from Michigan State University in 1976 with a degree in Special Education for the Visually Impaired. Her interest in fantasy and science fiction art stemmed from a visit to Detroit Triple Fanfair in 1972. After being a "convention artist" for a number of years, she got her first professional commission in 1983 from Mayfair Games to design the character cards for their Dragonriders of Pern board game. In 1984, Robin Wood met Anne McCaffrey at a convention and in the following years, artist and author frequently exchanged their ideas about what the Pern characters would really look like which subsequently led to the development of the book People of Pern published in 1988.

Aside from her Pern artwork, Robin Wood also did book covers for Dragon magazine and Llewellyn Publishing between 1985 and 1993 and designed a Tarot deck. Her career as an artist was interrupted in 1993 by illness, and in 1995 she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia. This chronic condition forced her to quit doing artwork outside of computer-generated pieces. In early 2005, she was able to push the fibromyalgia into remission. Since then, she has started drawing again.

Robin Wood has also become heavily involved in content creation within the virtual world of Second Life, creating a texture tutorial and library available within the game, and providing templates and other information on her own website.