 My name is Eric Howe and I'm a comic book artist. I do a book called The Good, Dark Horse Comics. As a kid I was just always, I was always drawing something and making up some kind of story to go with it, you know. And then I got into, I was in the comics when I was a small kid, but then when I was in junior high and high school I got back into comics again and just felt like it made the most sense for me to try to do this because those are the things I like to do. I like to draw and write stories. And you see like a perfect combination of the two. So I was really pursuing it. I sent in a lot of submissions to companies and started getting some small work with little small independent publishers and kind of went from there. It's hard. You gotta stay focused and have discipline to get up every morning and every night. You're working from your home. You gotta find something interesting in what you're doing because of time you're gonna kind of slack off and your work doesn't get done. So you gotta stay disciplined and keep your passion up on what you're doing. I think if you wanted to get into this business, first you have to realize that it's just like in the other entertainment industry where there's more people trying to get into it than there are jobs. And you know, you should be realistic and know that it's gonna be hard. It's gonna be tough. But if you have the talent and you have the passion to do it, you shouldn't stop. You should definitely go for it and put all your heart and soul into it and try to accomplish that. But if you're not gonna give it 110% and you're gonna not try to stick to a deadline or anything like that, then you should probably find something else because you're probably not gonna be successful in this. I'm Scott Young and I am a cartoonist. I worked for Marvel for about nine years drawing Spider-Man, X-Men, Human Torch, Fantastic Four. Currently we're adapting to Wizard of Oz novels. I've just been drawing forever as far as that. Job-wise I just went to conventions, showed my portfolio around, and they gave me a job. As soon as I started drawing as a kid, I thought, this is what I want to do for a living. And then every year I just keep hoping that I can still get me a job so I can keep doing it. And it really is just making sure that this is the most important thing, you know. You have this kind of set priorities. This is what you gotta do, you gotta take it serious. I mean, it's a hobby type thing, but if you want to do it for a living, you gotta do it day in, day out, hour after hour. Every minute is a free time you have. You gotta do it. Just draw, draw, draw. The more you draw, the better you get. The better you get, the more people are going to notice it. Come to conventions, get online, start a website. You know, just promote yourself. But the number one thing is just draw. The artwork speaks for itself. Well, I'm a cartoonist. My name is Sergio Delores. I've been with Mad Magazine since 1962. And I do comics. Besides that, I do Rula Wonder, which is a very stupid barbarian. And now I'm doing The Simpsons. So I'm doing writing and drawing The Simpsons. A comic. And three lines, two kinds of other comics. It's a very strange career. So if you start as a kid, like I did. I started from the beginning. Since I was in elementary school, I was a kid next to you drawing a class and the teacher getting mad at you. And it's a lot of people who go to art school and then you learn how to draw. And then they become artists. So it's many beginnings. But I started... I don't even remember when I started. Because I have always been drawing. So I started selling in high school. That's what I became a professional. Selling Gakartos. Mad Magazine. You always draw for fun, but suddenly it takes your life away. Suddenly that's what you do for a living. Without even knowing it. I went to college. I studied architecture. But I was doing cartoons all the time. So there was a track that would be in the house. It was fun being in college. But I was a cartoonist already. The work ethic is very basic. You deliver in time and you do the best you can. No matter what. You arrange a price. You don't draw for the price. You do the best you can. Try to get whatever is fair. But you don't do less because you get paid less. That's basically an ethical work. An ethical way to work. And doing what they want. The client wants. In my case, mostly all the work is done by me. On my own. My own bruised mind. So I do whatever I want to. That I think I'm part of it. That I do what I think is the best thing to do. I go from there. The way for them to start is practice. Taking the career seriously. Like a doctor is a brain surgeon. Suddenly he doesn't decide I'm going to operate somebody and take his brains off. Same thing with cartooning. You have to be the best. Because if you want to be a professional, you are taking the job for somebody else. You have to be better. You have to learn everything that is possible. Perspective, anatomy, storytelling. A lot of things. And take it seriously. I'm Billy Tan. I draw comic books. I broke in in 1994. So it's been quite a while now. I was actually major in modeling. Comic is something that I like. I like art. I saw that comic has a marketing. Comic was pretty popular when the image first started up. It was selling pretty good. I saw those guys, Jim Lee, Max the Red Street, the auditor founder, they were making a lot of money. We got to give it a try. Just work hard. Be able to do a lot of things. Be able to draw a lot of things. Be able to tell stories. Before you show your stuff to the editor, maybe you can come to the convention and show it to the audience. You can get opinions first on how they could improve your work. Before they show it to the editors. The editor is the one that's going to give you a job. I'm Jim Starlin. I used to write and draw comics. I didn't do much of it anymore. I did Warlock, Captain Marvel, Thanos, Greed, Dread Star, a few other things. My father worked at Chrysler. I used to come home with a lot of tracing paper and tonsils. I traced the characters out of the comics. When I came to New York, Marvel was doubling their line of books. They were hiring anybody who would come across state line to hold a pencil. That was 40 years ago. I started working on it. Just getting the discipline to draw every day. That basically is what it came down to before I started working on it. Once you start working on it, you sort of have to draw every day because you have deadlines. The biggest thing is building the work ethic and continuing and practicing and looking at stuff. This will be in the artist's looking and working. Draw things other than comics. Look at things other than comics. Come to conventions, see things, talk to the editor, what have you, show your work. Once you get into it, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Work in things other than comics also. Eventually go out of style and have to do something else. If you spread yourself around, it works out best. I'm Mike Munoz, creator of Hellboy. I drew comics for 10 years from Marvel and DC and finally got to the point where I realized I wanted to make up my own character so I got to draw exactly what I want to draw. I read comics, so I knew what comics looked like and I knew I wanted to work in that business so I just learned from looking at comics. It's a lot of work. I still work 7 days a week. I've worked 7 days a week for about 25 years now. Comics is a lot of work. But it's a lot of work. So you've got to really love what you're doing to do this for a living. Conventions are good. You show your work to other artists and stuff and they can give you some advice. But you look at comics and you see how they're done and you just hear yourself that way. But it's better, art school is a good idea. Any kind of drawing classes. The more you draw, the better you're going to be as a comic with artists. Guys who've just learned from copying comics, they don't make the best artists.