Katsuya Terada is probably best known in the US as the character-designer for the animated film Blood: The Last Vampire. He has also done work related to American comics, such as Iron Man and Hellboy . He also made additional contributions to issues of Nintendo Power, including a special edition Strategy Guide for Dragon Warrior. In Japan, he has done the promotional illustrations for Detective Saburo Jinguji mystery-adventure video game series.

He was in charge of the book cover and illustrations for the Kimaira series written by Baku Yumemakura, and was in charge of cover design and illustrations for Garouden, Shin Majugari, and Yamigarishi as well.

Terada has defined himself as a "rakugaki" artist, more of a philosophy than a style of drawing, in which one draws a little everywhere, all the time, without thinking too much, on notebooks etc. He is a very prolific artist; one of his collections of sketches numbers more than 1000 pages, appropriately called Rakuga King.

He has done very little group-drawn work (an exception being the manga Saiyukiden Daienou (Monkey King), his principal activities being illustration and character design.

His use of CG tools is integrated very well in his illustrations, giving his work a vivid and rich appearance. He has admitted various influences on his work, particularly European ones, like Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius) and the magazine Métal Hurlant. The author lives in Tokyo, Japan.