My name is Harry Candelario. I bought my first comic book when I was 11 years old. I was blown away by the art, and once I realized that people actually drew comics, I was hooked. I started drawing and never stopped. I got accepted into the High School of Art & Design in NYC, and 2 months after graduation, I started working at Marvel Comics. I worked in various departments until I landed in the “Marvel Bullpen,” where I stayed for a few years. There, I started asking questions about art, learning what I could about penciling and inking. I never stopped, even after I achieved my goal of becoming “a comic book artist,” more specifically, an inker, which I did for the next 13 years. I was more comfortable as an inker than a penciller; it was loads of fun.

Then a friend introduced me to Photoshop back in the 1990s. It was love at first sight. Comic book work was becoming harder to come by (so many talented artists—so few jobs), so I used that time to dive into Photoshop and Illustrator, which then led to web design… I was 11 years old all over again.

I built my first website in 2 days after I bought a copy of Web Design for Dummies. I started using some cheap web-building software that came free with the printer I had. After using it for a while, I noticed many limitations in the software, so I figured I had to learn HTML & CSS. (to be honest, I didn’t know CSS even existed at the time).

During this time, all my work in comics dried up, and I had to find some way to supplement my income while I learned web design. I started doing MAC repair. That started when a friend bought himself a new Mac and printer, but he had no idea how to set it up. I went to his house, set it up for him, and we had pizza afterwards. Then he told his co-workers…

Fast forward a few months, and I was making house calls all over New York City. Helping people set up their home offices and home networks, upgrade their hardware, or whatever they needed. Then those people spread the word to their bosses, which led to my working for their companies as a part-time MAC IT guy. I never needed to advertise; my reputation spread simply by word of mouth.

During this time, I was still learning everything about Adobe and web design. I mostly used Adobe GoLive and Dreamweaver to build websites. But I became too dependent on coding software and basically stopped writing and learning to code. My wake-up call came when I was told I didn’t get a job because I wasn’t familiar enough with hand-coding. After that, I went back to basics and started hand-coding again. Everything improved dramatically. I was able to build websites faster, and I became fascinated with cleaner code. The software I was previously using produced bloated, proprietary code, which in turn made it difficult to fix problems.  By going back to basics, I was able to see the problems and fix them right away.

Now I live in North Carolina, working mostly in web design and repair. Meaning, I fix and/or update old websites. I also convert old HTML sites into WordPress websites.

And I’m still learning something new all the time.