My friend who dresses up as a bat

I was nine years old when I first met Batman.

We've been friends ever since.

My own little worlds.

Yesterdays post has put me in a reminiscing mood. In writing a little about Turtles and Transformers, I remember the cartoons that hooked me as a kid.

Not just the above mentioned but also He-Man (By the power of Grayskull!), Mask (Crusaders, working all the time!), Defenders of the Earth (Defenders!), Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors (I still have no idea what it was about), Voltron (a first love), (Thunder-Thunder-Thunder) ThunderCats, and can I remember it all without googling; Eyes of the Hawk, Ears of the Wolf, Strength of the Bear, Speed of the Puma…BraveStarr.

I still have my Tex Hex action figure, which reminds me of all the toys I had and still have. Then my mind starts to overflow in a tidal wave of memories like pitting He-Man against a troop of GI-Joes (GO JOE!) in an oversized Action Man tank and…….wait. What am I doing? Where am I? This isn’t 1987?

I was talking about the cartoons, yes, not the toys. I’ll have to come back to them at a later date, definitely. I’m putting my Boglin down now.

For me cartoons weren’t just a reason to get up early on Saturday mornings or most other mornings for that matter. They were also a window into a world of imagination and creativity. In each of these half hour episodes were contained a fully realised world, some more fully realised than others admittedly, but worlds that had been created and maintained as separate, satellites to the real world. Satellite worlds in which unnumbered stories could be told about heroes and villains, robots and aliens, people and places. Limited only, I believed at the time, by the breadth of your imagination. But most of all these worlds were not made by an alien or super-being; they were made by people, just like me. Well adults, and even though I could believe at the time that some of these adults were aliens, I did know that one day, in a galaxy, far, far away, I would be an adult too. I’ve been striving to create my own world ever since.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-wKXHbjeVo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umJMrxuYzDY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9Lalfph7I0

Robotic Crotch Lasers

I have been ‘good’ at drawing from an early age, for as long as I can remember really. What this meant, for me, was that I could put down on paper a cartoon robot that closely resembled the one living in my brain, suggestive crotch laser and all (yes I drew a robot that had what I intended to be a short tail laser but, not quite having a handle on the rules of perspective at the age of nine, said laser looked like mechanical genitalia and yes it did appear in a school yearbook, I blame the editor).

I could copy my favourite Transformers (Optimus Prime, Dinobots, and Ravage) though I did prefer to create my own characters. I remember there was a kid in my class in primary school who could draw really cool Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle stuff and I was so jealous because I’d try to draw them but I’d get distracted and draw something else that popped into my head. Yes I know it’s probably better that I drew my own creations but, let me tell you, he was the popular artist guy for at least a year solid and sometimes you just want to draw really cool Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Raphael, mostly). Bitter? Me? No.

Most importantly though, for me, was that I could look at something; an apple, a leaf, a model aeroplane; and I could draw an accurate representation of it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I was a child prodigy capable of drawing photorealistic pencil studies of anything my gaze surveyed. No, thanks to the lottery of genetics, I found I had a natural talent for drawing from life. I have rested on the laurels of this talent at various times during my artistic progression but I have found that I’m happier and prouder of myself when I push myself to grow this seed that is my talent and challenge and strengthen it with hard work.

What follows is a reconstruction and does not necessarily represent the actual crotch laser drawing. Can you spot it?

The Next Step

It’s been a challenge to start posting regularly again, there are the stresses and strains and wants and needs of life calling and pulling in different directions. But there’s also a hesitancy in me, that has nothing to do with outside influences, which is all my own.

I feel it’s in part down to the break I took from working. I’ve spent the last year focusing on looking after myself and it can be an isolating experience at times as there is a self-involvement that needs to take place in order to admit that; ‘Hey, I’m sick, I need to go easy on myself a bit!’

As well though, and this is coming up for me now because I’m getting back to work and I’m wondering; am I ready to commit to working for other people now? Will I wait another week or do I just send out the emails today? But on top of all these questions is the knowledge that I don’t want to work in the same way I was working before my break. This doesn’t apply to stylistically or creatively really. For me they grow and change organically. I’m talking more about attitude, more about how I approach the doing, the strategising. I was ‘working’ a lot and not getting a lot of work done. Early mornings, late nights and a lot of creative blocks to the point where I think my drawings look pained in themselves, constipated characters.

So here I am again, about to set out to work for the company in England, the agent who wants that finished book, the cool independent project that speaks to my soul, and the little voice in my head that says 5 more minutes, 5 more minutes. And I look at these sketches and doodles and I try to remember to treasure the freedom, the invention, and the brave individual expression that they can represent.