Born with a pencil in hand, Dirk is a driven, creative maniac. He spends nearly every waking moment in the heat of genesis, fashioning graphic art or working on this ever-expanding online manga. A perpetually wired artist, he over-exposes himself to the carcinogenic rays of desktop CRTs. As comfortable with pencil, ink, and paper as he is with a mouse or tablet, he draws freehand and uses the computer to finish and enhance his artwork.

Translation: Dirk is just a big geek who spends all his time in his studio either working on his mac or drawing PS. He draws it by hand and touches everything up in Adobe Photoshop™ and Adobe Illustrator™. To see how, visit the PS tutorial.

While in high school, Dirk was smitten by graphic and interactive storytelling, and soon, characters and worlds surged forth from his fertile imagination. These soon took on a life of their own as they began populating the comics he created. This preliminary work gained him access to the elite training grounds at Millikin University, where he sharpened his hand (and pencil) at life drawing and delved into computer art. There he was also first exposed to manga giants Masamune Shirow, Kenichi Sonada, Kosuke Fujishima, and Hayao Miyazaki, whose work planted a seed in his brain.

Translation: Dirk has been obsessed with comic books, manga, role-playing, video games, movies and anime since he was a awkward, pimply teenager. His early American comic book influeces included Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird, Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane, Dave Sim, Ben Dunn & James O'Barr. Despite these addictions, he occasionally unplugs himself long enough to read some real novels and literature, and even to create some noise that could be loosely termed as 'music'.

From his inner sanctum in the City with Big Shoulders, Dirk daily does battle with the forces of evil, pausing only to continue work on PS.

Translation: Dirk currently resides in Chicago and unfortunately has to work as a freelance graphic designer in order to fund this thing (otherwise it would be done much sooner!)