BIOGRAPHY
April grew up within sight of the Disneyland fireworks. By kindergarten she was already known for paintings of Bambi and Thumper. When she was thirteen, she read The Lord of the Rings five times in a row and her fate as a fantasy artist was pretty much sealed.
By college, she was attending Science Fiction/Fantasy, Game and Comic conventions showing and selling art and playing too much D&D. After collecting degrees in English Literature and History, she finally got serious about a career and got a BFA in Illustration (gritty details below), and began free-lancing-- doing black and white interior art for computer game manuals, hintbooks, and role-playing game books.
During a slow period, friends at a computer game developing company lured her into doing concept designs of characters for a computer game and slowly dragged her in-house and onto the computer, animating characters and creating portraits. Other friends dragged her to GenCon where she started selling art at an Exhibitors booth and picking up work in many collectible card games and role-playing games. She as been juggling her day and free-lance jobs since then.
Education:
B.F.A. with honors (Illustration) ART CENTER COLLEGE OF DESIGN, Pasadena, California.
B.A./M.A. (History) OXFORD UNIVERSITY, England.
B.A. cum laude (English Literature) MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE, Massachusetts.
Also attended: Edinburgh University, Scotland.
Orange Coast College, CA.
University of California at Irvine.
Etc.
Computer Game Companies I've worked full-time for:
Liquid Entertainment
New World Computing (3DO)
The Dreamers Guild
Interests:
Reading-- SF/F, Mysteries, Romances, Historical Fiction, Comics.
Art-- art books, museums, techniques, painting & drawing. Favorite artists: Michaelangelo, Botticelli, Burne-Jones, Alma-Tadema, Leighton, Mucha, Parrish, Rackham, Beardsley, Pyle, Frazetta, Whelan, Brom, Canty, Jody Lee, Michael Parkes, James Gurney, John Howe, NeNe Thomas, LA Williams, Rob Alexander, Ruth Thompson, Heather Bruton and tons more!
Travel--lived in CA, MA, CO, Britain; toured around Europe, Morocco and the far East.
Theatre (the RSC and musical theatre; has performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland and the Academy Playhouse in Orleans, MA). Also likes watching opera, ballet, movies and animation/anime.
Music-- The Cure, Peter Murphy, NIN, Loreena McKennitt, Bach, Ancient Music and going to concerts, listening to KROQ (alternative rock). Worked part-time as a radio dj.
Snow Skiing (spent a winter skiing at Steamboat CO; also skied and enjoyed: Sun Valley ID, Killington VT, Mammoth CA, Val d'Isere, La Plagne, Gstaad)
Archaeology (spent some time digging at Crickley Hill, Gloucestershire, UK).
Ancient Egypt.
Feudal Japan.
Regency & Georgian England.
Authors-- Georgette Heyer, Dorothy Dunnett, Patrick O'Brian,
J.R.R. Tolkien, C.J.Cherryh, Lois McMaster Bujold, many more.