Careers in Comic Art

Draw comic strips, caricatures and spot illustrations for syndicated newspapers, magazines, trade or business publications, T-shirts, calendars, greeting cards, books. Uses story writing skills and most often humor, irony or cynicism. Cartoonists mostly work alone, but are often times required to meet with editors for approval.

Usually plays a tracking role of guiding work from freelancer to freelancer to meet production deadlines (usually every 3 weeks for a monthly comic). Occasionally includes art direction.

Entrepreneur, freelancer or staff artist that draw, storyboard, and sometimes write narrative stories for comic books. Jobs are split up in larger companies to meet demanding production deadlines.

Conceives story, develop script or plot often indicating specific views of the action to be portrayed. Some companies use a style where scene descriptions and full dialogue are given just like a screenplay.

Pencilers create comic book layouts and action figures outlines from type written script according to a story line. Colorists color reduced Xerox copies of comic layouts (after inking) and color code each page for color separation for printing. Letterers then write dialogue and interjections into comic balloons. Inkers outline figures and background of each panel with ink and add dimension to the comic illustration.