About Kelly Yates

I currently work full-time at Kontoor Brands (Wrangler & Lee Jeans) as a Senior Graphic Designer, and illustrate comic books part-time. I’m best known for illustrating multiple comics and covers for Doctor Who (IDW/Titan), and designing the My Hero Academia and Doctor Who Kawaii toy lines. I’m also the creator of Amber Atoms, a creator-owned comic book series that was originally published by Image Comics.

My passion for art, especially comic book art, stems from a family road trip out to California when I was 12-years old. On the way back, we stopped at Yellowstone National Park for the night and to my distress I quickly discovered they had no TV’s in the entire building. Luckily, the gift shop had a few comic books. The one that caught my attention was Cyrstar #6 with Nightcrawler on the cover. I have been reading comics ever since.

Skipping ahead to my college years, I was sitting through an extremely long, extremely boring lecture class, doodling on the side of my paper, when a friend leaned over and commented, “You ought to be an artist”. After a lot of prayer and soul-searching, I decided to switch degrees and pursue a 2-year degree in Commercial Art & Computer Graphics. So here I am years later and making a living at it.

Deciding to be an artist at 21 has been an adventure to say the least. I know many incredibly talented artists that have been drawing since they can remember, but since I started drawing so much later in life, I always feel like I’m playing catchup. That probably plays into my motivation to become a better artist with each illustration I work on.

So the adventure continues….