Besides
Serial Experiments Lain, Abe has drawn the conceptual characters for the recent show
Nieaa Under Seven. His drawings are as creative as always, and breaks the tradition of anime to make the characters more life-like. Abe stated that drawing is therapy for him. The discovery by Triangle was pure luck. Originally, the
Lain series was limited to a
PlayStation game, for which Abe delivered his drawings.
In many ways, Abe is not a manga artist at all. His experiments with other styles (E.g. http://www.people.or.jp/~ab/abcg27.html) suggest that he is more of a designer than a manga artist. His figures are also more symbolical than the standard manga / anime figures. Lain's hair cut, for example, is a symbol of her unsymmetric world. (This is more obvious in the videogame than in the series.) The lines of design can be drawn even further to more abstract artists such as Gaugain (http://www.public.iastate.edu/~rriley/images/YoshitoshiABe/ABe03.jpg).
Abe is very influenced by computers, and used to dream about becoming a programmer. Currently, his home is filled with seven (!) computers. His homepage is: http://www.people.or.jp/~ab/