Erich Von Hase has been drawing pictures as long as he could hold a crayon. While other children his age had trouble coloring in the lines, Von Hase was rendering images that most adults without any art training would have trouble drawing.

“My dad still has some pictures I drew of Batman and Robin when I was three years old. They were blocky and they had big triangles for underwear, but they look like the kind of art a twelve year old would do. And that’s pretty good for a kid who is barely old enough to form a sentence.”

Erich drew pictures almost everyday, a lot of superheroes, sharks, and dinosaurs, as a kid, but it wasn’t until he got his first copy of the original Dungeons & Dragons boxed set when he was 10 years old that he really started to take art seriously. He spent many hours copying the line art of Jeff Dee and Erol Otus, learning form, composition, and line weight techniques from these masters of the craft.

By junior high school, Erich was writing and illustrating his own comic books, which he published on his father’s Xerox machine then sold for a dollar a piece at school. By high school, he had upgraded his techniques and outsourced the printing to professional printers. It was clear that even as a kid, Erich had an entrepreneurial spirit. He also won numerous awards in high school both for his paintings and his short stories, and was professionally published before he was an adult.

Erich put himself through college doing freelance writing, illustration, and advertising. Ironically, Erich was often asked to teach the other students in the art and graphics classes he was taking. He also worked the convention circuit selling prints of his artwork, but still found time to graduate with honors.

Since earning his degree, Erich has been the owner and operator of Von Hase Graphics, a small operation that boasts such clients as NBC Television, Seaworld, Graceland, Fitzgerald's Casinos, The Orlando Magic, and Anheuser Busch. While he has produced everything from video to web for corporate, commercial, and industrial projects, Erich has been fortunate enough to have had his share of success in the industries that he has wanted to work in ever since he first sketched those old Dungeons & Dragons illustrations as a child.

Erich’s work has been published in several independent comics titles, such as the CROSSFIRE Commandos, Redneck X and the Conniption Quartet of Carnage, The Slapmaster, and Vengeance Incorporated. Erich’s work has also been published throughout the roleplaying games industry, by lines such as Discwars, Troll Lord Games, TSR, I.C.E., GDW, Hero Games, FASA, WoTC, and Games Workshop.

“I’ve had a very gratifying amount of success, but I have to say that when people I’ve never met come up to me and show me tattoos of my work that they’ve had permanently placed on their bodies, it is a real hoot. It let’s me know that there are people in this world who really like what I do.”

Erich Von Hase continues to write and illustrate, hoping to expand his success and further develop his talents.

“It’s in my blood. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”

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