Akira Toriyama
Akira Toriyama was born in Japan on April 5th 1955. As a young child, he was always drawing, and his school books were covered in doodles. When young Toriyama wanted something, he would draw it again and again, so he got a lot of drawing practise this way. He remembers that he once really wanted a horse, and can still remember exactly how to draw one. He was very interested in all types of movies, and got a lot of inspiration for his manga from Disney and Jackie Chan movies.
After graduating, Toriyama started work in an advertising company, but after a year he got bored and quit. He began drawing manga when entering a competition. When he didn't win, he kept drawing more and sending them in. Toriyama finally got his big break in 1978 in the weekly Shonen Jump magazine, with the manga 'Wonder Island'. After that came 'Dr. Slump', about a young android girl called Arale, who lived in Penguin Village with her friends and played with poo. Dr. Slump was highly successful and was made into an animated series. When 'Dr. Slump' ended, Toriyama's next major, and biggest, project was 'Dragon Ball', which was started in 1984. 'Dragon Ball' lasted for around 10 years. Toriyama has also worked on many smaller manga, including the more recent 'Cowa', 'Kajika' and 'Sand Land'. He has a very distinctive art style and most of his work is very funny and contains parodies of famous manga characters. Apart from manga, he has worked as a character designer for computer games.
Toriyama now lives in Tokyo with his family. He has a son and a daughter, who he watched Dragon Ball on TV with when it first aired. He found and adopted his pet cat, and also likes keeping fish. Toriyama doesn't like bad weather, so most of his manga are set in tropical climates. He also prefers the countryside to the city, and that is also reflected in his manga, as most characters live in small villages or isolated places. He is afraid of rats and wears glasses.