Who or what made you want to become an illustrator?

I was lucky to grow up with art all around me—my father, a pioneering computer animation artist, taught me to draw at a young age. According to my family, I spent most of my childhood sketching, painting, climbing trees, and dancing. But the moment that sealed my fate was watching the music video Take On Me by A-ha— when I was just 5 or 6 years old. I remember it so clearly, and was absolutely mesmerized by the way the girl stepped into a graphic novel world and, I think I thought, That’s what I want to do when I grow up. I was also inspired by comic books like the X-Men and Batman. I used to spend hours drawing pictures of Wolverine. I became obsessed with folklore and fantasy, and was drawn to the work of illustrators like Brian Froud and Alan Lee, and the fantasy worlds in movies like Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, and Legend.  I remember getting copies of the art books for those movies and drawing from them for practice. As a teen and young adult, I was a huge Harry Potter book fan, (and still am) and I wanted to create illustrations like the ones made for that series from illustrator Mary GrandPré. That love of storytelling and immersive, escapism illustration has stayed with me ever since. I've always loved reading fantasy books, mythology and folklore stories, and have quite a collection of illustrated books in these genres, as well as an extensive children's book collection. You can see my love of fantasy in the first portfolio I made when I graduated from The Academy of Art University. Many of my illustrations featured magic, fairies, dragons, goblins, and other fantasy characters, as well as spooky, mysterious adventure scenes.