Name: Bettina Marie Kurkoski
DOB: March 26, 1973 (ah yes, year of the toilet paper
shortage!)
Residence: Plymouth, Massachusetts USA
Hair: currently short & med. brown with bleached blonde and black chunks(style changes frequently...it's
amazing what one can do with short hair!)
Eyes: Brown with cataract in right eye (ah, yes folks! I'm
completely blind in one eye! Go figure!)
Height: 5'4" (darn close to Hobbit size!)
Occupation: Manga artist for TOKYOPOP, Freelance Illustrator & owner of Dreamworld
Studio!
Favourite Artist: Joe Madureira, Amano Yoshitaka, Tetsuya
Nomura(Final Fantasy Artist), Kazuya Minekura, Kubo Tite, Alex Ross...there are lots & lots...
Favourite Anime/Manga: Saiyuki, Fruits Basket, Bleach, Full Metal Alchemist, Trinity Blood, Rurouni Kenshin, TriGun, Vampire Hunter D:
Bloodlust, Outlaw Star, & lots more!
Favourite Music: Various Anime, Game, JRock/Pop and Movie Soundtracks, Buck Tick, PLC, Barenaked Ladies, Lorenna
McKennitt, Enya, Dave Matthews Band,
Favourite Books: Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage
trilogy (Oh my god gorgeous Vanyel! Need I say more, Read it!),
...okay those were the last books I read..
Favourite Movies: "Singing in the Rain", "Too Wong Foo",
"Lord of The Rings"!, "Harry Potter"(all of them of course! XD), "Monty Python and
The Holy Grail", "The Goonies"
Well, I've pretty much been drawing since I can remember!
Througout elementary school, I'd entertain myself drawing thousand
of pictures of Garfield. By the time I hit seventh grade, I was
bitten by the comic book bug and had a healthy dosage of anime: "Robotech",
"Starblazers", "Voltron", "Force Five", "Tranzer Z" and other
cartoons such as "Thundercats", "He-Man", "G.I. Joe", "Silverhawks",
"Galaxy Rangers". I then began creating my own characters and comics
with a very eighties flare to their styles! By my Junior year in
high school I discovered fantasy illustration thru the likes of
Boris Vallejo and Frank Frazetta. Then went off to college, majored
and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration from
UMass-Dartmouth. After college, I took up some regular Joe jobs to
pay back college loans and rekindled my love for anime, which I had
all but forgotten during high school and college and have been
thoroughly addicted to anime since 1996! Thru this addiction my
style evolved with a very anime look to it.
Even though I did go to college, I'm pretty much eighty percent
self taught! There are a lot of things I learned on my own during
high school, college and even after college! This doesn't mean you
don't have to go to get a good
art education . I highly recommend going, if not, for the fun
alone and you'll be more inspired to work with like-minded people
all around you!
