Background
Kibuishi was born April 8, 1978 in Tokyo, Japan. He moved to the United States with his mother and brother in 1982.
Kibuishi was born April 8, 1978 in Tokyo, Japan. He moved to the United States with his mother and brother in 1982.
He graduated from University of California Santa Barbara in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts in film studies.
He is best known for being the creator and editor of the comic anthology Flight and for creating the webcomic Copper. He is also the author and illustrator of the ongoing Amulet series. Kibuishi enrolled at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1996 in pursuit of a film studies degree.
While attending University of California Santa Barbara, he credits the university"s newspaper, the Daily Nexus, as where his illustration career started.
Despite previously drawing for his high school"s newspaper, " all began when I started writing comics for the Nexus. I actually went to UCSB for film.
I was trying to quit drawing." He would ultimately serve as the Art Director for the Daily Nexus for three and a half years, and developed his comic Clive and Cabbage during his tenure. Kibuishi started drawing at age five.
He has stated that "..the sadness that came from no longer having cool robot television shows like Ultraman around once we came to the States that triggered a lot of my early drawings and projects." He has also noted Garfield and the magazines Mad Magazine, and CARtoons as catalysts for his love of comic books in particular.
After he graduated from University of California Santa Barbara, Kibuishi worked as an animator for Shadedbox Animations for two years. He decided to leave animation to focus on comics, where he could spend more time writing. He started producing the monthly comic Copper at his website which ran for seven years, ending in 2009.
Flight Flight was conceived by Kibuishi as an anthology with contributions coming from friends.
The project was promoted at the Alternative Press Expo, where it attracted the attention of Erik Larsen, then-new publisher of Image Comics. This caused the project to explode, attracting talent from all over the industry.
Image published the first volume in 2004 and the anthology series concluded with the eighth volume in 2011. Explorer Following the conclusion of Flight, the Explorer series was Kibuishi"s anthology for children using many of the same contributors to Flight.
Seen as a successor series, Explorer covered three books and concluded with Explorer: The Hidden Doors.
Amulet Kibuishi is the creator of Amulet, a series of graphic novels which debuted in 2008 with The Stonekeeper. In addition to The Stonekeeper, other titles in the series include The Stonekeeper"s Curse, The Cloud Searchers, The Last Council, Prince of the Elves and Escape From Lucien. The series is scheduled to run through nine books
Other projects While editing Flight Volume 1, Kibuishi created the 4-issue steampunk graphic novel Daisy Kutter: The Last Train, published by Viper Comics.
Through his relationship with Scholastic, Kibuishi was asked to illustrate the covers for the Harry Potter novels for inclusion in the 15th anniversary edition box set.