Name: Meaghan Beninati
Pen name: Ajahli
Birthday: 09.16.86
Education: Minneapolis College of Art and Design

Degree: BFA Comic Art

Yes: Doggies, Caffeine, Tumblr, Drilling to the Heavens with her XXX
No: Twilight, Poison Ivy

Current Project: Grim Reaper School

Other: Gives a crap about Animal Rights

Places to find me: Facebook – DeviantArt – Tumblr – Twitter

Tends to depict herself as a robot girl, a dinosaur or a wolf thing.  Draws comics about ghosts, badass girls and fantasy worlds.  Main influences include: Jamie Hewlett, Hayao Miyazaki, Koji Morimoto, Hiromu Arakawa, Tamora Pierce, JK Rowling, Yoshitoshi ABe, Alessandro Barbucci, Akira Toryama, and various artists on the internet.  Listens to her ipod 24/7, has dogs for best friends, and wastes all of her free time on the internet.

Bio Time:

I always feel weird talking about myself in third person, like I’m narrating the beginning of the Star Wars Trilogy or something.  So I’ll keep it fairly simple.  I am a 25-year-old artist who currently lives with my family in Memphis, Tennessee. I work retail to pay my debts and in the meantime work on Grim Reaper School, my webcomic. I just recently started going to cons in hope that I can share my work with a potential audience outside the web.   So here I am, another artist struggling in the decline of the economy, hoping to make it in that big, wide, scary world.  My family mainly consists of artists and storytellers, and I’m influenced by their experiences as well as my own.  I am always interested in telling stories about family history and where a person comes from.  I am heavily influenced by Japanese artists, culture, and fashion which always makes an appearance in my work somehow. I am also influenced by music, friends, and new technology.  I wanderlust almost constantly, with the dream that one day I’ll be on the road, collecting stories from everywhere, but that has yet to happen.  Right now I am just trying to find my place in the world.

I have thousands of stories I’ve never told, but it is my dream to finally, one day, share them.  That is, if the whole King of the Universe thing doesn’t pan out.

Resume/List of Work/Education History:

Education:

• Minneapolis College of Art and Design 2004-2008
  • BFA: Comic Art
• Collierville High School 2001-2004

Internships:

• Whistling Shade Literary Magazine 2007
  • Short story editor
  • Written Review for the I-Tetrology published in the Winter 2007 issue
• Vincent Stall 2007/King Mini International
  • Studio Assistant
  • Art prep, scanning, minimal photography and page editing

Published/Commissioned Work:

• Whistling Shade 2007: I-Tetrology review published in winter issue
• Pene’s Frame’s 2008-2009 | Pene Harbuck : Greeting card designs
• Lindeman Pictures 2008-2009: Art used for the set of Nobody
• Red Wolf Studios: Grim Reaper School Issue #1 in BURST! Anthology
• Second Life: 2009/2010: Gemini Lotus Clothing textures and Advertisements
• Ghost Light #1: Self published

Skills

• Technical Skills: Photoshop 5, 7, CS4 and Elements 6, 7, CS4; Microsoft Word 2000 and 2007, Microsoft Works, Basic HTML and CSS, Dreamweaver 8 and CS4
• Artistic Skills: Character Design, Sequential Art, Photoshop, Markers, Watercolor, India Ink, Collage, Photography