Not to be the soothsayer of doom, Anz, but just go into this with your eyes wide open. Hell, I work in the theatre, and it's grueling as all hell sometimes, not to mention impossible cut-throat. But I stay with it because I just can't imagine myself doing anything else but scene design for a living. And the fact that I'm not half-bad (no immodesty there -- I can't change the fuses on my truck sometimes, but I can make entire worlds for a hundred bucks in materials) has made me more or less "successful": not financially, not yet, but that's just a matter of time. But I stay with it because I honstly cannot see myself doing anything else for a living. And when you enter a field like this, you really have to ask yourself that question as well. It's the only way to survive.