SVA began in 1947 as one of the few legitimate places on earth for cartoonists and illustrators to study their craft. This was just as cartooning was emerging as the great American popular art form we know today.

The "comic book" is now recognized as a serious creative discipline, requiring expert line and color technique, and a thorough knowledge of anatomy. The classics of the genre are the superhero comics of DC and Marvel, which deal with the theme of good vs. evil - hardly "comic" subjects. Over the decades, cartooning has matured even further, and now the exemplar of the form is the graphic novel, which tells highly complex, literate stories, often taking on politically sensitive topics.

SVA has remained in the vanguard of the art. Here, you can still learn the craft of the comics from the best, like DC legend Carmine Infantino, who created the first Batgirl comics, and study the new form with people like Ben Katchor, winner of a coveted MacArthur "genius" award. Comic innovators come here to learn the newest developments in the graphic novel, and trends in Japanese-inspired manga/anime. Our cartooning faculty is the biggest and the best of any arts college, which is only fitting, since we were the first to offer a degree in cartooning.

Whether you are preserving the old form or detonating tradition with a new one, you get the same grounding in technique at SVA. Composition and design; perspective; drawing from "real life"; color theory. Plot development and the building of dramatic narrative tension are of equal importance, since cartooning is one-half written story. You will learn how to break down the sequential action that shows the story you are telling.

Cartoonists are passionate dreamers. The really funny thing about the comic book is that something so quirky and private could be so commercially popular. Our instructors have made careers out of sharing their inner worlds. Let them into yours and see your cartoon dreams blast through into reality.