Taral Wayne

Taral Wayne
Born	1951 (age 65–66) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Nationality	Canadian
Area(s)	Artist
Pseudonym(s)	The Romulan Baked Potato
Awards	Rotsler Award, 2008

Wayne MacDonald (born October 12, 1951 in Toronto, Ontario), known by his pen name Taral Wayne, is one of Canada's best known science fiction fan artists, and has been nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist eleven times, from 1987-2012. In October 2008, it was announced that Taral was the recipient of the annual Rotsler Award. In recognition of his contributions to science fiction fandom, particularly Canadian fandom, Taral was named Fan Guest of Honour by the 2009 Worldcon, Anticipation.

The pen name Taral originated from a fictional synthetic language, Siroihin, that he described in one of his early science fiction fanzines.

Taral began his involvement in science fiction fandom in 1971 when he joined the local Ontario Science Fiction Club (OSFiC). Over the years he contributed art and writing to a wide variety of amateur and semi-professional fanzines, as well as publishing his own -- Red Shift, Delta Psi, Synapse, New Toy and others. In the late 1980s he made the jump to professional illustration, by necessity working mainly outside the science fiction genre. A west coast American magazine called Ruralite was his main client at that time.

During the 1990s Taral focused more on comic book work. His major achievement was the Furry comic title Tales of Beatrix (Mu Press & Vision Comics). Created by Steve Gallacci, the stories were a collaborative effort - drawn by Taral, co-written by creator and artist. Due to generally poor sales in the entire comics industry at the time of the Marvel Comics bankruptcy, the series was dropped after only a few issues. Thereafter the artist contributed short pieces to other comics as time and inclination permitted. Taral also created many back covers for Gremlin Trouble, a comic published by AB Pixilations.

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