- Hi, my name is Erihii Nyamor.

My company's called I Can Draw.

I'm an illustrator, a cartoonist, and a teacher.

(upbeat music) Not only do I draw for myself, I draw to convey emotion, inspiration, happiness, sadness, and my company, I Can Draw, is how I do all that.

So as I got older and tried to become a professional illustrator, I noticed a lot of artists design fan art.

I went to comic book hunts and I was seeing artists that weren't established, they didn't work for Marvel, they didn't work for Disney, but they had their own style of these set characters.

And then I was like, "Oh, okay, that's something I could do, implement it within my own profession."

So I seen there was a niche, I seen there was a market for that, and that just made me want to do fan art myself.

But I never thought like this is, hey, I'm gonna make a career out of it.

I have been doing fan art for over 10 years.

I started designing prints, illustrations, mashups of different fan art.

So to me, fan art is designing characters that are already established and doing it in my own style.

Something that I found out going to a lot of comic book conventions.

At first I was hesitant in jumping into this field because that's what we're taught in high school, college.

Hey, you know, you can't use other people's characters, right?

But I seen that it was a whole community of people doing that.

Almost like an unwritten rule, right?

The fan art community, I joined it because I wanted to establish the fan base.

I want to be part of the art world.

So in order to stick out, I had to just find my own niche of the fan art.

Of course, I had my own style, my own funny twist.

For me, I wasn't the strongest drawer in the classroom.

I don't think any of my classmates, my teacher would be like, "Hey, Erihii's gonna be a professional illustrator."

But you know, I was able to will it because I kept on going.

So what inspired me is working with youth.

I've been working with youth for a while.

Working with youth inspired me to create a book, "I Can Draw," so I can inspire them to keep on going and become an artist themselves.

They could see my progression from kindergarten all the way to now.

If I design fan art for anything I do, I make sure I have my own style where people are like, "Yeah, I know that's Erihii."