Comics is the SVA department most likely to be described inaccurately in Korean-language guides, for a simple reason: the name changed and the guides did not. Anything written before autumn 2023 calls it Cartooning. The curriculum, the chair, the thesis requirement and the faculty roster have all moved on since.

This article covers the BFA in Comics as SVA publishes it: the name change and its stated reason, the four-year course sequence with codes, the thesis requirement, who teaches, where student work goes, the money, and an honest reading of what the program is and is not for an applicant arriving from Korea’s webtoon industry.

1The name changed on 31 August 2023

SVA announced three program name changes on 31 August 2023, effective that autumn semester. BFA Cartooning became BFA Comics. In the same announcement, BFA Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects became BFA 3D Animation and Visual Effects, and MPS Directing became MPS Film Directing.

Provost Christopher Cyphers framed the general principle: an adjustment to a department name is an important part of distinguishing and specifying the curriculum. For this department specifically, SVA said the update more accurately and competitively reflects the success of the program’s alumni and faculty in the dynamic universe of the comics industry.

The other renaming in that announcement matters too, because Korean applicants often shortlist SVA’s animation offerings alongside comics. The program once called Computer Art is now 3D Animation and Visual Effects, and its old name is the one that still circulates.

2One of the very few Comics BFAs in the world

SVA describes the program as one of the very few Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in comics worldwide, delivered as a cohesive four-year course of study in what it calls the publishing capital. The chair is Viktor Koen, who also chairs BFA Illustration — the two departments sit in the same building at 310 East 22nd Street, on the fifth and seventh floors.

That shared leadership is worth registering. Illustration and Comics at SVA are neighbours, not rivals, and a student who applies to one and finds the other is a better fit is moving within one chair’s remit rather than across an institutional boundary.

The published scope of the degree is wide: SVA lists writing and plot development, composition, perspective and figure drawing, penciling, inking and panel layout, traditional and digital colouring, and lettering and production. The output formats it names run from graphic novels to autobiographical and experimental work, in print or online.

3120 credits, and where they go

The degree is 120 credits, and SVA publishes the split: 72 credits of studio art, 30 of humanities and sciences, 15 of art history and 3 of electives. A quarter of the degree is writing, reading and history. For a discipline whose whole material is narrative, that is a structural choice rather than a general-education tax.

From SVA’s published BFA Comics curriculum, September 2026. Offerings rotate and, given the finance note above, confirm that the specific sections you are counting on will run.

Two features of the first year surprise applicants. Only one course — CID-1020 Introduction to Comics — is a comics course. The rest is Drawing I and II, Painting I and II, computing foundations, two writing courses and a European painting survey. A student who arrives expecting to draw comics for four years spends the first one drawing and painting from the same foundation as an illustration or fine art major.

The second is that painting is required, both semesters. Not many comics-track applicants have painted, and fewer still have painted recently. It is the most common gap in a Korean applicant’s preparation for this specific department.

4Year two runs in three lanes at once

The second year is structured as three parallel requirements rather than a fixed sequence. Each semester a student takes one course from a core comics lane, one from a digital technique lane and one from a non-digital technique lane. Lettering and digital colouring sit in the same year as ink drawing and perspective.

That parallelism is the department’s argument about craft: the digital and the analogue are taught as concurrent skills, not as an old method replaced by a new one. A student who wants only the tablet will still take Drawing with Ink for Cartoonists; a student who wants only the brush will still take Digital Coloring.

Note also that AHD-2030 History of Cartooning sits inside the core lane, carrying the old departmental name. Course titles migrate more slowly than department names.

5Year three turns professional

The third year is where the degree changes character. Alongside the two Pictorial Projects studios, students take CID-3030 Professional Practice: Comics and HLD-3040 Elements of Storytelling, and choose between CID-3060 Producing Comics and CID-3070 Publishing and Production in the Comics Landscape.

Publishing and production as a graded elective is unusual. Most art degrees leave the business of getting work made and distributed to a single senior seminar or to the alumni network. Here it is a third-year choice, taught in the city where the American comics publishers are, by faculty who work inside them.

Professional Practice then recurs in the fourth year as CID-4040. A subject taught twice, two years apart, is a subject the department believes students only understand the second time.

6The thesis is ten finished works

The fourth year carries CID-4900 and CID-4905, Senior Thesis I and II: a thesis project of the student’s own conception, developed across two semesters. SVA states the graduation clearance requirement plainly: ten finished works by the end of the semester.

There is also ILD-4055 Senior Lecture Symposium, carried for no credit — a requirement that costs nothing on the transcript and still has to be completed. It is the sort of detail that surfaces in a student’s final semester if nobody flagged it in the first.

7The faculty include editors, not only artists

SVA lists roughly thirty-four faculty for the department, and the roster has a shape that repays reading closely. Alongside cartoonists and illustrators it carries people who commission and publish comics for a living.

Titles reproduced from SVA’s published faculty listing, September 2026. We report them as the school states them.

Four of the people on that list decide what gets published. That is the concrete meaning of an art school being in the industry’s city, and it is a different proposition from a program taught entirely by practitioners. An editor reads a portfolio differently from an artist: they are asking whether the work can carry a book.

8Where student work goes

SVA names four outlets for student work, and they are unusually specific for a department page.

A student-run magazine is the one to notice. It means there is a publication that a second-year can be printed in without a faculty gatekeeper, which is a rehearsal for the industry the department sits inside. It also means that portfolio pieces accumulate during the degree rather than at the end of it.

9If you are coming from webtoon

This is the section Korean applicants need most, and it requires care, because the honest answer is a fit question rather than a ranking.

SVA’s own description of the degree’s output includes work in print or online, so the department does not exclude digital serial formats. But read the course list again and notice what it is organised around: panel layout, lettering, inking, penciling, perspective, production, publishing. These are the crafts of the page. No course in the published curriculum is named for vertical-scroll format, episodic platform serialisation, or the studio production pipeline that a Korean webtoon is made inside.

Left column: our characterisation of the format most Korean applicants arrive with. Right column: SVA’s published curriculum and program description.

None of that makes a webtoon portfolio a weak application. Sequential storytelling is sequential storytelling, and an applicant who can hold a reader across fifty panels has the ability the department is looking for. What it means is that a student should apply knowing they will be asked to work on the page, in ink, in paint, and in a first year that is mostly not comics at all. If that sounds like a detour, this is the wrong department. If it sounds like a set of tools you do not yet have, it is the right one.

Our practical advice to Korean applicants preparing for this department has three parts: rebuild one webtoon episode as fixed pages, so the portfolio shows page composition; add observational drawing and at least one painted work, because the first year requires both; and submit finished sequences rather than character sheets, because the thesis requirement is a finishing requirement.

10Money, English and the calendar

SVA’s undergraduate tuition is $27,635 per semester, or $55,270 a year — the lowest tuition among the schools in this series, below Parsons at $62,348, CalArts at $62,954, Pratt at $64,703 and RISD at $66,460. Housing runs roughly $18,700 to $23,300, health insurance is about $3,590, and departmental and material fees add several hundred to a few thousand dollars a year. A realistic total lands in the mid-to-high eighties of thousands.

On English, SVA publishes a TOEFL requirement of 4.5 on the scale ETS introduced in January 2026, and a Duolingo requirement of 115. Both sit in the middle of this series: CalArts publishes 4 and Duolingo 105, RISD publishes 5 and 120, Pratt publishes 92 on the old scale and Duolingo 125.

11What our record shows

Royal Blue keeps a record of every acceptance we have confirmed directly with the student: 1,099 acceptances across 95 schools between 2009 and 2026, of which 454 carried scholarship money — an award rate of 41.3% and $23,746,972 in total.

Royal Blue admissions records, 2009–2026. Initial award letters. Comics is not a separate line in our record; the two nearest majors are shown instead.

SVA is our most frequent placement by school — 140 acceptances, more than any other institution we track — and its award rate of 29% is below our overall 41.3%. That combination is the honest summary: we place a lot of students there, and fewer of them get money than at MICA, SAIC or Otis. The average, when an award does arrive, is above our overall average.

We do not publish a Comics line because we do not have enough cases to make one mean anything. Inventing a category to fill a table is the single most common way admissions statistics become fiction, and we would rather leave the row out.

QFrequently asked questions

Is it still called Cartooning?

No. SVA renamed BFA Cartooning to BFA Comics on 31 August 2023, effective that autumn. One course title, AHD-2030 History of Cartooning, still carries the old word.

Can I apply with a webtoon portfolio?

Yes, and sequential storytelling ability is the thing being assessed. But rebuild at least one episode as fixed pages so the portfolio shows page composition, and add observational drawing and a painted work — the first year requires Drawing I and II and Painting I and II regardless of what you arrive able to do.

How much comics do I actually draw in first year?

One course: CID-1020 Introduction to Comics. The rest of the studio load is drawing, painting and visual computing, plus two writing courses and an art history survey. The comics-specific sequence opens up in the second year.

What does it take to graduate?

A two-semester senior thesis of your own conception, with ten finished works required by the end of the semester for graduation clearance, plus CID-4040 Professional Practice and the no-credit ILD-4055 Senior Lecture Symposium.

Should SVA’s financial situation change my decision?

It should change your questions, not necessarily your decision. No closure has been announced. Ask admissions directly which sections in this department ran last year and which are scheduled, ask whether the faculty you are applying to study with are teaching next year, and apply by 1 February so that you are inside the scholarship pool rather than after it.

→Related reading

• SVA Illustration: the department next door, under the same chair
• SVA Animation
• SVA Film
• SVA in 2026: what has changed
• Parsons Illustration
• RISD Illustration
• Building a portfolio as an international student
• SVA BFA Comics, official page