Between the Lines: Sharvonique Renee Fortune

When she was a 'tween, Sharvonique Renee Fortune raced home from school daily, sidestepped the dozen kids in her mother's in-home daycare and escaped to her room to switch on the cult cartoon Jem and the Holograms.

"I would videotape the shows and pause them to draw the figures," says the 33-year-old illustrator, who will headline an anime panel at the DC Independent Film Festival (March 4-14, dciff.org), along with local artist Steve Bennett. Fortune's teen pregnancy with her high school sweetheart threatened to derail her college career, but she went on to earn two degrees in animation, chasing a dream that would result in jumping on a plane to L.A. to meet Pixar honcho John Lasseter. But the man she met in math class, married and with whom she had another child, had dreams as big. The pair created a video gaming and anime conference called T-MODE (April 16-18, tmode.org). Past events drew crowds of 350, featuring Japanese rock bands, major anime artists and an outpouring of hip Harajuku girls. When Fortune's husband died two years ago, the animetrix shuttered her business and conference. But, after regrouping and re-motivating, the illustrator is rebooting T-MODE at the Alexandria Hilton, with the help of Japanamerica author Roland Kelts and a lineup set to attract DC's manga-philes. Grap your costume and a ticket ($20-$50). It's a fortune comeback you won't want to miss.