Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mary Bellamy. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Mary, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you share a story about the kindest thing someone has done for you and why it mattered so much or was so meaningful to you?

Hmm…that is a hard one. There have been a few times where people’s kindness really pushed me forward when I otherwise would have been too shy or hesitant to go it on my own.

One of the biggest ones was when I found a mentor while sitting in the PRO lounge at San Diego Comic Con who invited me to the animation studios and let me sit at her Comic Con table for my first ever year selling books. She gave me the motivation to not only submit my work to companies for jobs but also to get my first table on my own for San Diego Comic Con where I’ve been for 15 years serving the girls comics market.

Another person pushed me into submitting my portfolio for My Little Pony and it allowed me to get my foot in the door and do several covers for IDW Publishing. Of which one of my covers will be for My Little Pony #18 coming out in Nov 2023.

Still there were a few others that pushed me into getting into comics and sketchcards and gave me a shot in their anthology books and as an inker and colorist. I can say that I’m grateful for all the kindness that I have received over the years.

Mary, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I can’t remember a time in my life where art wasn’t a part of it. As a child growing up in Los Angeles County, I loved watching the Saturday Morning cartoon block and rapidly devouring cartoons, comics, and all they entail. I knew from an early age that I loved animation and cartoons. However, while growing up I was more focused on schoolwork. Still later on, I was drawn back into the art field after watching countless anime shows with female leads and I knew that I wanted to be a part of the popular art world and that I wanted to create my own things especially for girls. That like the Japanese anime series girls could be the main characters. They wouldn’t need to be relegated to the background or to other minor roles.

It’s taken many years to get to where I am today. Now I have worked on over 250 books, in one role or another, thousands of artist trading cards, and some animation work. I started out in comic anthologies, which were the only feasible way to get your work out there when I first began. Simultaneously, it lead to some animation studio work and then later on working on licensed trading cards. Then I moved to comics, both self-published and for other companies. I’ve taken many different roles from the editor of the Womanthology (Sketchbook), an all-women anthology book put out by IDW Publishing, to inking, to color assisting, to comic book covers, and to writing and illustrating entire stories. These things lead to working on illustrations for RPG and tabletop games for Renegade Game Studios.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I was younger I had always planned on working in animation, I had even working for a few smaller studios, and it may still happen on a larger scale in the future, but after some health-related setbacks, I realized it wasn’t going to be the path that I could take. Far before the pandemic, I was forced to find a way to work from home and still be relevant which meant that I had to pursue illustration of various types.

I was an artist on a website called Deviantart and found a journal that asked if people wanted to draw Marvel characters for something called sketchcards, which are collectible real pieces of art included in trading card packs. So after submitting my art I secured my first job with Upperdeck. This lead to other companies asking me and more and more big-name projects like Cartoon Network licensed properties like Adventure Time, Steven Universe, and Rick and Morty. It was a cool way to make drawing official characters in your own personal style pay off.

While sketchcards were fun I needed to find more work. This is where conventions paid off. I took my portfolio with me and showed editors of comics my work. This led to me working on one of my childhood dream properties, My Little Pony as a comic book cover artist. Later, drawing some more My Little Pony art on my own time lead me to get a job with Renegade Game Studios as an official artist for their RPGs and table top games.

The other upside of conventions was encouraging me to get my own table and publishing my own graphic novels. My goal was to cater to a mostly female audience which has its own challenges. Not everyone understands why I choose to, but I really wanted girls to know that there were stories for them that were outside of the established genres they were used to seeing. Girls can love comedy. They can read spooky stories. Heck, they can read stories that make them feel brave after having read them. Some parents balked but others were open-minded and after having bought one book came back and bought everything at my table. It made my day. I still see those same girls who’ve bought my books each year at San Diego Comic-Con. I love my fans and hope to inspire them they too can make their own work and get it out there outside of the traditional publishing paths.

I soon pivoted to colorist work because it’s the most labor intensive part of graphic novels outside of drawing the art. I have been doing colorist and flatting work for various books published with Scholastic, First Second, and Oni Press. Sometimes you receive credit for your work and sometimes you don’t which can make it hard to get future work if someone can’t open a book and see your name listed as working on it. Kickstarter can be a terrifying but also rewarding site that has also opened some doors for me. Friends other creators have hired me to do illustrations and short stories for their anthologies and projects.

Sometimes I think about changing course to writing literary novels and independent animation projects as the main studio routes seem quite daunting now. But with sites like Patreon and Kickstarter and the community of online artists, I won’t say it’s outside of my grasp entirely. And while I won’t say that my path was the one I thought I’d start out on, I will say that it’s led me to many amazing opportunities and hopefully many more to come in the future.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part of being a creative is taking an idea and making it to something real. Whether it’s writing a story that gets published on paper, designing a character that’s turned into a toy or a product or even creating something for yourself. To be able to manifest the abstract into something tangible is a wonderful thing and in doing so we can touch or inspire other people to create their own projects or even just make them feel something.
Personally, I’ve created entire properties like my graphic novel series Ah Heck!! The Angel Chronicles and Faux Facts – The Truth Can Be Strange! which are primarily targeted at girls. I set out to create girls-oriented projects that I would have liked to have read as a kid but that I noticed weren’t very prevalent. There are oodles of princess stories out there and I didn’t feel like I had anything new to say about that genre so I opted for comedy, supernatural hijinks, and stories themed around the afterlife. Many parents seek me out at conventions for that very reason.

Creating characters and the worlds they live in makes me extremely happy. I can’t imagine living in a world without the arts. The arts are the heartbeat of our culture and it’s an amazing thing to be a part of it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.marybellamy.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/zorilitamarybellamy
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/zorilita
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marybellamy/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/zorilita
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/zorilita
• Other: Online store www.zorilita.com

Image Credits
My Little Pony Adventures in Equestria Deck Building Game and logos copyright to Renegade Game Studios and Hasbro. Art Mary Bellamy.