Hi, I'm Kris or Eph. I don't like my true forename at all, so let's keep it at those two! ;)
I was born in 1977 in Germany and after I finished grammar school and then an apprenticeship, I went to a graphics school at Essen. There I did very well but I was unhappy about the thematic arrangement. My wish was to become an illustrator, but since that profession didn't exist back then I had to learn about advertising design and other deathly boring stuff. Fate then hit me during the long waits for the train home. At a fantasy game store I met my first boyfriend, at almost 19 years old. Shortly after I left school to run said game store full time. I moved in with my boyfriend, took a pencil back in hand without flinching 6 months later and these days I doodle happily again. Oh, the guy from back then? I'm married to him since 2002. :)
After my husband had finished university and we're able to live comfortably with one income I'm a childfree housewife!
I'm so lucky that I may stay home to find fullfillment in art and better my skills, and later on I want to try selling my comics and fantasy crafts online.

In the beginning I only drew and painted miniatures, but over the last years I dedicated myself to learning countless crafts and arts, to find out which I do best in and like the most, and it's a wild and funny journey.

Some achnowledgements first:

Patrick (here as Dorian) - for being the best partner a woman can wish for! For always standing by my side and supporting all my plans. For keeping the server running as tech-admin and doing his best to customize my website and my pc according to my silly dreams, so that even a technical dumbass and denier of innovation like me can be happy.
Everyone I know, for all the nice chats, discussions, the support, the cheers, the critique, the help, the translation help, the comforting and also the gaming (everyone please pick what matches them *gg*).
KAnne and Darkest_Secret - wherever you are today, I still miss my soul sisters.

Also a shoutout to all those great people who gifted me such wonderful fanart, baked me cake, painted window colours for me, supported me financially or cheered me on / sent me critique by email, forum, shoutbox or whatever, to everyone who laughed and cried with me and the fans who clicked comic list banners to make Seekers more popular. You're all super!

Now for the mandatory list of hobbies and interests that nobody reads. ;)

My hobbies are drawing, painting, (rarely) game programming, comics and manga, videogames, miniatures and terrain building, cooperative boardgames, writing stories, dreaming, tinkering, photography, all kind of crafts and overall everything which helps me bring along work on my dollhouse, since my biggest darlings are my Asian fashion dolls these days (mostly Pullips).

Of course I love a ton of music, movies, series and some novels, but a list wouldn't help anyone.

My main reading material besides reference books about art and creativity are comics, especially manga.
As for Western authors, I like Neil Gaiman best. As for manga authors I absolutely adore Rumiko Takahasi and Osamu Tezuka, both of which are my paragons.
That means the list of my favourite series looks somewhat like this:
Case Closed!, Inu-Yasha, Ranma 1/2, One Pound Gospel, Maison Ikkoku, Ode to Kirihito, Black Jack, Buddha, Mermaid Saga, Marie and Elie, Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne and Lone Wolf and Cub, to mention just a few of the mangas.
Western series include: Sandman, V for Vendetta and Watchmen.

Of course there are also artists who inspire me apart from comics and manga. I admire Brian Froud for his wonderful goblins (also features in the Labyrinth feature film), but can't get me to like his fairies. Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, Amy Brown, Linda Ravenscroft, Rebecca Guay and Rodney Matthews are all very talented water colour artists, Ian Miller is the best ink artist I've ever seen and John Howe, Paolo Parents and Adrian Smith are all fantastic with acrylics, but I love William O'Connor even more.
I own reference and/or illustrated books by most of these artists and of course there are many others I love, too.

I own many videogames, mostly for Sony consoles. My favourite genre are Japanese rpgs with sprites and round-based fights and building games like Sim City or Harvest Moon. Since these genres barely exist these days (especially not on consoles and Linux) I slowly grow out of this hobby. Apart from the yearly dose of Disgaea and rare pearly like Minecraft or Ni No Kuni there's rarely anything that can catch my interest for long and most games only stress me out. It's a bit sad since I started back in the days of the Atari 2600 but everything has to go to an end someday.

Apart from comics the oldest hobby of husband and me is miniatures and board games / tabletop games. (Both are in this for waaaay over 20 years!) We played countless rounds of Chronopia, Warhammer Quest and others back in the day, but when I stopped working at the games store and our group fell apart due to real life that hobby died for a very long time (over ten years). Thousands of miniatures sit in our basement, mostly unpainted. The hobby was revived, though, when I sat there some years ago immobilized with my broken leg and we desparately looked for something to do. Cooperative board games to the rescue! It started with Zombicide and hasn't stopped so far. I love our new collections of Super Dungeon Explore, Zombicide and other miniatures, and although we're still lacking a new gaming group this hobby is a major one again and hubbie and me play every week.

Otherwise I love Open Source, am an avid Linux user for years and try my best to be a greenie and vegetarian. My personal quest is to damage this planet as few as possible by my presence. I hate onions, only wear skirts and no pants, prefer to walk everywhere, love apple pears, never watch Youtube, always take on too many projects, am infamous for monster-emails of epic lengths and am always distracted by shiny things or figurines of all kind. I'm rarely outside, since I'm allergic to most trees and grasses, and since my immune system is shot I'm ill all the time, but I make the best out of my life.

Preferably I'm at home in reach of all my craft materials, and a day isn't a good day if I didn't have a chance to cuddle my husband at least once! I love chatting with nice people by email or forum and killing zombies on a nice board game night.

 

Overall: This homepage is me. Cuddly crochet animals and miniatures bristling with weapons, cheap pink plastic ponies and exorbitantly priced collector's dolls, sexy bikini Giselda and suddenly prude Monster Highs, and comics with all their elves, fairies, undead and mystical beings who love, hate, goofs around and fight. All of that is me - a bit crazy, a bit loony, a bit serious, a bit sad, very playful, like all Aquarius' too curious and adventurous and most of all not standardized.