Manga artist and illustrator Katsuya Terada was born on December 7, 1963, in Tamano City, Okayama Prefecture. After graduating from the Industrial Design Department of Okayama Technical High School, he moved to Tokyo and enrolled in Asagaya College of Art and Design. He made his commercial debut while still a student and began working as an illustrator immediately after graduation. Terada subsequently began publishing his work in a variety of media, but he is particularly known for creating numerous characters in games. He has worked on the Detective Jinguji Saburo series, which began in 1987, and Virtua Fighter 2, released in 1994. He was responsible for the character design for both the game and film version of Blood the Last Vampire, which won the Grand Prize in the Animation Division of the Japan Media Arts Festival in 2000. He is also deeply involved in special effects film character design, having worked on costume and concept design for films such as Cutie Honey and Devilman (released in 2004) and Yatterman (released in 2009). He is also active in a wide range of genres, including illustrations for manga and novels. He was one of the first artists to use tablets for drawing, and was known as one of the leading digital artists at the time.

Terada is sometimes nicknamed "Rakuga King," which he says means "doodle + ing." Outside of work, he draws a huge amount of pictures on a daily basis, and is also active in drawing events. In 2013, he held the "Terada Katsuya: Here 10 Years" exhibition, which brought together approximately 300 of his works from the past 10 years.