Like doodling in your books? Here's a career for you

AN ILLUSTRIOUS JOB: This job lets you escape into the world of imaginary characters.

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Chennai: Illustrator Jacob Nicholas’s job allows him to escape into the world of imaginary characters. In the last eight years he's illustrated over 600 children's books in 20 languages, and if Jacob is to be believed then the job is child's play if you have the flair for it.

“I used to have an interest in illustrations so while I was doing my college I decided to branch out into advertising, but that didn't exploit my illustration skills. So while I was in advertising for some time I thought I will start off on my own,” Jacob says remembering his early days of struggle, and this is how Jacob’s firm was born – Jacob and Sona.

If one is looking for a bachelor’s degree or a diploma in fine arts and visual communications, it normally includes illustration as an elective or a module.

Some of the colleges that offer the course are: Amity School of Fine Arts in Delhi, JJ School of Fine Arts, Mumbai which offers bachelor's degree in fine arts, the Stella Maris College in Chennai that offers a fine arts and visual arts course. One could even go for the 31-month-long specialty programme at Arena Multimedia.

You could also take up graphic designing, fashion designing or animation depending on interest levels and what one wants to illustrate.

Jacob wanted to illustrate comics but you could choose to be a fashion illustrator, medical illustrator or a magazine illustrator or someone who creates characters for video games.

“One needs to have skill, a knowledge of anatomy and basically expose themselves to cartoons and storybooks and things like that. After if there's some formal training in commercial art then it just hones your skill,” says Jacob.

Most of the action takes place on drawing boards and computers, so it wouldn't hurt to have some skills in that area as well.

“Some people work with Photoshop, some people use illustrator and some others use coral draw, but other than knowing those tools in the software, I don't think any great software knowledge is required,” says Jacob.

But does the job pay well? “For a single illustration there are people who charge anything between Rs 2,000 to 10,000 – that's for a single A4 sheet illustration – and in animation field the character artiste can get about Rs 40,000,” Jacob explains.

And if you are like Herge then you can create a character like Tintin, and then as they say there’s no looking back after that.