Research 18 - 22

22. John Romita, Sr. was born the son of a baker in New York City, on January 24, 1930. Before 1947 he was educated at Manhattan's School of Industrial Art. While working at Forbes Lithograph in 1949, a friend offered to pay him to be a ghost penciler for a comic he was putting together. His friend was Lester Zakarin, and the company was Timely, which would eventually become Marvel. In 1951, Romita was drafted, and he attained the rank of corporal in about 8 months. He did work for Marvel, then DC, then returned to Marvel for his most famous work on "The Amazing Spider-Man." Later he was promoted to art director of Marvel, and still does pencil spots from time to time.


21. John Romita, Jr. was born in 1956 in New York City. He aspired to be a famous comic book artist like his father, John Romita, Sr. He started out drawing sketches for reprint covers for Marvel UK, but his first published work was a six-page comic in Spider-Man Annual #4. This was his breakthrough, and it bought him a 3 1/2 year stint on "Iron Man." He also spent three years on "The Amazing Spider-Man" before getting to work on "The Uncanny X-Men." He has worked on many projects since then, including "Cable," "Punisher War Zone," "Daredevil," and "Wolverine." He received the Inkpot Award in 1994 and an Eisner Award in 2002.


20. Jimmy Palmiotti was born August 16, 1961. He went to school at the High School of Art and Design, NY. In the late 1980s, he has been co-creating popular comic lines, like "Ash" and "Painkiller Jane." He continued his career at Marvel in 1991, doing inking on "Ghost Rider," "Punisher," and "The Nam." Since then he has done many more, and he wrote and storyboarded short films for Nike's "Hooptown." He has been dating Amanda Conner, known comic book artist. He frequently works with Justin Gray, and the three co-founded Paperflims.


19. Steve Dillon was born in the city of Big Ben, London, England in 1962. His first professional comic work was done at the tender age of 16, drawing Marvel UK's Hulk Weekly. Since then he has worked on numerous titles, like "Escape from the Planet of the Apes," "Nick Fury," "Doctor Who Magazine," "Hellblazer," "Preacher," "Hitman," "Punisher," and "Wolverine." He often collaborates with gritty writer Garth Ennis. Dillon spent a few years in Ireland before returning to England and settling in the town of Luton.


18. Rowena Morrill was born 1944. She began her twenty year career in New York City, where she resided all but four years of it. Her art deals with science-fiction and fantasy subjects and has been published in several famous magazines and books, for example "Omni" and "Playboy." She put out several books of her own, such as "The Art of Rowena," "Imagination," "The Fantastic Art of Rowena," "Tomorrow and Beyond," "Infinite Worlds," and "Imagine." Currently, she lives in the countryside near upstate New York because nature gives her inspiration.

Research 13 - 17

17. Julie Bell was born in Beaumont, TX, in 1958. Despite frequent moving during her childhood, Bell kept working on her interest in art. She took classes at six different colleges, and it certainly paid off. She has done work for many major companies, like Coke, Nike, and Ford. She has also worked for DC, Image, and was the first woman to do a Conan cover for Marvel Comics. Perhaps her most famous idea is her "metal flesh" painting, which broke ground on the cover of Heavy Metal. She took up body building, and she is happily married to Boris Vallejo.


16. Boris Vallejo spent his early years in his hometown of Lima, Peru. At first he desired a career as a concert violinist, but after seven years of lessons he changed his mind, and switched over to medicine. His new interest only lasted for 2 years before he decided that his real calling was art. He received a 5 year scholarship at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes where he won a gold medal for his art. With only a few dollars to his name and not knowing English, Vallejo left for the United States. His first job was illustrating for a department store, but 8 years later he decided to become a freelance artist. From the 1970s Vallejo has illustrated over 300 covers, not limited to Tarzan, Conan, Heavy Metal, and cards for Marvel.


15. Kris Verwimp is from Belgium, where he paints a great deal of epic battle-type pictures, which become album covers and illustrations for a host of metal bands. His first album cover was commissioned in 1993 for Ancient Rites's album "The Diabolic Serenades." Verwimp shies away from computer-generated pictures, preferring to work in acrylics on paper or cardboard. As a boy, he went to see the movie Conan, and he was also influenced by Frank Frazetta and X-Men comics, plus many other comics.


14. "Don" Ed Hardy spent his childhood in Southern California, where he was born in 1945. He studied tattooing under a man named Sailor Jerry, but Hardy is known for his need to experiment with tattoo designs. He kept inking tattoos for a total of forty years, and he is now known as the godfather of contemporary tattoos. His designs incorporate Japanese, American, Cholo, surf, and hotrod cultural images. However, Hardy currently pursues other forms of art, having retired from inking. He enjoys printmaking, painting, and of course, drawing. He participated in many exhibitions to date, and even curated a show called, "Pierced Hearts and True Love" in New York at The Drawing Center.


13. Rob Sato was born and raised in Sacramento, CA. He graduated from California College of Arts and Crafts with a B.F.A. His work has been shown in numerous shows in California, to name just a few: Game Over, Printed Matter, Dirty Paper Machines, Sacred & Profane, You Only Exist Because of Us, Unofficial Masters, Just Say No, and From the Collection of a Swiss Lady. Sato received a grant in 2004 for "Burying Sandwiches" from Xeric Foundation of Self Publishing.

Illustrator research 1-12

1. Jozef Szekeres has done work on many Disney sequels, including Aladdin III, The Little Mermaid II, Lady and the Tramp II. Besides being a senior animator, he also sculpted maquettes of the main characters fro each. Mud Fish and Flix Animation are a couple of the companies he has done freelance animation for. He also draws comics in his homeland of Australia, like "Oblagon," "Platnium Grit," and "Greener Pastures." For Sirius Entertainment, he did guest issues of "Safety-Belt Man" and "Dawn: Return of the Goddess." He does comic centerfolds and is very active on the comic con scene. In 1988 he was commissioned to do the mascot for the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Szekeres just launched his 16" fashion doll line, and before that, he was a concept designer for the movie "Dark City."


2. Scott Adams entered the world on June 8, 1957. He grew up in Windham, NY, in the Catskill Mountains region. He took the honor of valedictorian of his high school class. He attended college at Oneonto, NY before getting his masters of business at Berkley, CA, and became a certified hypnotist in 1981. He worked at Crocker National Bank in San Francisco from 1979 to 1986, while he was going to school. While working at Pacific Bell, a technology and financial firm, he created "Dilbert," based on his working experiences. "Dilbert" was picked up by United Media in 1989, and Adams kept his day job while drawing the strip. He owns two restaurants in CA.


3. Gary Larson, creator of "The Far Side," was born in Tacoma, WA, on August 14, 1950. He grew up there, working at a record store and playing jazz guitar on the side. He drew his first professional cartoons at age 26 for "Pacific Search." He spent a sort stint at "The Summer News-Review" before moving on to "The Seattle Times." His strip "Nature's Way" was cancelled after several complaints were received. Larson decided to move to California, and "The San Francisco Chronicle" turned "Nature's Way" into "The Far Side," a smashing success. Larson drew until 1988, when he took a 2-year break to play jazz and go visit Africa. He retired from "The Far Side" in 1994 after becoming frustrated with deadlines. He won the Reuben Award twice, in 1990 and 1994.


4. Though Luke Chueh was born in Philadelphia, he spent his childhood in Fresno. He received his BS in Graphic Design from California Polytechnic State University. He got a job as in-house designer/illustrator at the Ernie Ball, Co. During his time there, he won several awards and was published in Print Magazine and Communication Arts. On the side he created and maintained E.XP., a magazine covering the genre of intelligent dance music. Chueh relocated to Los Angeles in 2003, but had trouble securing employment there. Instead he concentrated on painting. After one of his paintings was displayed in the underground show called Cannibal Flower, Chueh hit instant success. Some toys were manufactured based on the cute but misfortunate characters in his work.


5. Michelle Araujo, or Mia, grew up in Los Angeles, CA where she enjoyed animated films, cartoons, drawing, reading, and writing. She developed a love for stories and characters, not only in writing but in art, as well. Araujo graduated in 2007 as valedictorian of Otis College of Art and Design, with her degree in Illustration. She also minored in Creative Writing. Most of her shows take place in pop-surrealist galleries, but she aspires to write and do art fro a series of children's books in the future. Her inspirations vary from fairy tales to performance art.


6. In 1973 Jason Limon was born in San Antonio. When he was fairly small, he would doodle sketches of his surroundings. At San Antonio College, he studied under the Visual arts and Technolgy Center. This gave him the knowledge to start his career in graphic design which spanned 12 years—from 1995 to 2007. He decided to focus on his favorite way to create work—by hand. Now he spends his time making paintings and doing commercial illustrations. His work has been featured in Print, American Illustration, Communication Arts, and Graphis.


7. Jessica Joslin was born in Boston in 1971, where she spent her youth. She was fascinated by dead bugs on window sills. She started to collect them, and her unusual hobby spilled over into collecting other things from nature and combining them with man-made fragments. In 1992 her father mailed her collections to her, and she began to build strange creature from the pieces. Joslin has many skills, including model-making, carpentry, mold-making, sculpting, and machining. Still, her creature consume most of her time.


8. Laruie Lipton is a New York native, but she has lived in Belgium, Holland, France, and Germany, but she prefers the city of London, her current home since 1986. Before she began her world travels, Lipton attended Carnegie-Mellon University, Pennsylvania. She was the first student there to graduate with a Fine Arts Degree in the concentration of Drawing. Her work has been featured in the magazine "Dangerous Ink."


9. Michael Hussar was born in Long Beach, California in 1964. He was an instructor at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, before working at UNLV workshop/lecture. In 2002, he began teaching at the LA Academy of Figurative Art. Two years later he returned to Art Center College. He has illustrated many children's Books, including "Oddly Enough," "A Wizard's Dozen," "A Starfarer's Dozen," and "A Nightmare's Dozen."


10. Todd Schorr was deeply influenced by the pop culture of the 1950s. He watched all manner of TV shows and read National Geographic. This melding of images became his surrealistic work. He was born in New York City, but was raised in Oakland, New Jersey. He studied at the Philadelphia College of Art and graduated in 1976. He has done album art for ACDC and Illustrations for Time, Francis Ford Coppola, and George Lucus. He attended the "American Pop Culture Images Today," a conference in Tokyo in 1986, that was also attended by Gary Panter. Schorr now makes his living solely from his paintings.


11. Josh Keyes was born in Tacoma, WA in 1969. He earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before receiving an MFA in painting at Yale. His work has been published in many periodicals. Galleries in San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Denver have shown his paintings. However, Keyes himself lives in Oakland, CA.


12. Noah Woods is best known for his children's book "Tom Cat," produced by Random House. "Tom Cat" was named in the top ten picture books of 2004. Woods graduated from Art Center College of Design and UCLA. After his education, he did work for tons of big names, not limited to Playboy, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Coke, Pepsi, UNISEF, Yahoo, Microsoft, Apple, New York Life, and American Express. Currently living in L.A., he teaches at Art Center, and he does guest lectures at the National Illustration Conference in his home state, and the Visual Communication Speakers Series. He has received gold and silver medals from the Society of Illustrators.