Bettina Kurkoski

This article is not a part of the Warriors universe and is from the real world.

Bettina Kurkoski
Residence
Current:	Plymouth, Massachusetts
Past:	Montague, Massachusetts
Date of birth
March 26, 1973
Novels
Warriors series:	The Rise of Scourge
Other novels:	Toklo's Story, Kallik's Adventure, Lusa's Tale

Bettina Kurkoski is an artist who did artwork for some of the Warriors graphic novels.

Biography

She was born on March 26, 1973, near Montague, Massachusetts. She currently resides in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and was educated at Plymouth North High School where she achieved a degree in General Studies and went on to The University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, where she earned a BFA in Illustration. After she graduated, she began searching for art-realated jobs, but shortly after that, tragedy struck, and she was hospitalized and underwent surgery.

When she recovered, she started all over again, and using the internet, she launched her own web page to showcase her work. After her friends told her about TOKYOPOP's Rising Stars of Manga 2 competition, she applied for the competition in 2003, and got placed as runner-up. Bettina did the OEL manga, My Cat Loki, and it was her first proffesionally published series (published by Tokyopop).

She also illustrated the exclusive cover for Star Trek the Manga: Shinsei Shinei, both cover and short story "Communication Breakdown" for Star Trek the Manga: Kakan ni Shinkou and Warriors: Rise of Scourge (due out in June 2008), all published from TOKYOPOP.

Quotes

"That's my story and I'm sticking to it!"

"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!"

Works

She did the artwork for The Rise of Scourge in the Warriors Series, and also for books 1, 2 and 3 of the Seekers Manga, also by Erin Hunter. Her other works are as follows:

• Rising Stars of Manga vol. 2 (2003)
• My Cat Loki vol. 1 (2006)
• Star Trek: TOS manga vol. 1 (2007)
• My Cat Loki vol. 2 (2007)
• Star Trek: TOS manga vol. 2 (2008)
• Princess Ai: Encounters vol. 1 (2008)
• Star Trek: TNG manga vol. 1 (2009)
• Toklo's Story
• Kallik's Adventure
• Lusa's Tale (work in progress)

External links

• Bettina's Personal Website
• Bettina on DeviantArt
• An Interview with Bettina on Warrior's Wish
• bettina@dreamworldstudio.net
• bettinakurkoski@gmail.com