(Artist - The Spider; Cover Artist - Buckaroo Banzai; Owner of Kosart Effects Studios LLC)
J. Anthony Kosar, age 23, is an award-winning artist who graduated as Valedictorian from the American Academy of Art in Chicago, IL earning his BFA in Illustration in 2008. He works within multiple industries of the artistic world through his company Kosart Effects Studios, LLC. Kosar recently painted a series of 10 black and white interior illustrations for Moonstone Books for The SPIDER: Judgment Knight #1, and painted 2 comic covers for Buckaroo Banzai: Hardest of the Hard (Part 1 and 2). In the Fine Art world, Kosar has received many awards including the "Dong Kingman Award" at the 2009 American Watercolor Society's 142nd Annual International Exhibition in New York, NY and “Best of Show” at 24th Annual Illinois Watercolor Society Open Exhibition in 2008. Both of these awards were awarded to his painting of a Greek Soldier “Never Know, Never Forgotten” which was one of 40 paintings selected from the AWS Annual to tour through 7 States in their 2009-2010 Traveling Exhibition. Also, in 2002 at age 16, Kosar ventured into Special Effects when he created his first foam-latex mask, The Zombie. Since then, he has created make-up, effects, creature suits, and props for numerous plays, commercials, conventions, feature and short films, and has held several Make-up and Effects workshops throughout the Chicagoland area. During Summer 2007, Kosar interned in Hollywood at Stan Winston Studio (Jurassic Park, Predator, Aliens) working on several commercials, including Xbox’s “Halo 3: Believe” campaign, and the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and James Cameron’s upcoming major motion picture Avatar. In 2008, Kosar sculpted his first commercially made Halloween mask for Zagone Studios, Gargoyle, and has made several more Halloween masks for Zagone’s 2009 and 2010 product lines. You can view J. Anthony Kosar's artwork by visiting his Official Website at: www.kosarteffects.com
