In Comics, Novels, Film, and Animation for TV and Film....

One great way to get a leg up on the competition is to self-produce everything. Instead of waiting around for some producer you don't know at a studio that's never worked with you before, create your own short film on your computer, using Wacom Tablets and Adobe Flash. In Canada nowadays, nearly all animation is Flash or CGI. And while the design quality itself is poor, shows like Motorcity prove there's a lot of room for  aesthetic improvement in these areas. And animators like Don Bluth and Bill Plympton can give plenty of examples of one man independent films.

Just do as much of the work as you can yourself, using paper, pencils, pens, paint, Wacom Tablets, Photoshop, FLASH, and general computer animation and illustration software. You'll have to do something very similar to that in college if you attend art school (making a short film to graduate) anyway, so you may as well do it of your own initiative, instead of waiting around for the stress pressure of some teacher scolding you over being late on a project.