There has always been quite a strong black and white art tradition in Australia, with quite a large contingent of cartoonists, given the size of the population.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
There are a lot of really great cartoonists out there. It's nice to be thought of as one of them.
There is a reason why the cultures of Indigenous Australia inspire such fascination. And that is that they represent a unique way of thinking about the world. A vision that over tens of thousands of years has risen out of the land, the power, the very being of our continent, Australia.
I do greatly admire Australian artists.
Well, there are better cartoonists now than there ever have been. I firmly believe that. There's some amazing work being done.
Australia has an increasingly multicultural society.
I do think Australians as a rule have a very good sensibility to them, and I think most people, if they were given the option, wouldn't choose to rip off a filmmaker or an artist - I don't think its part of the Australian psyche.
I've always wanted to make Australian art interesting. To get a different audience watching art documentaries would be great.
At any comic book convention in America, you'll find aspiring cartoonists with dozens of complex plot ideas and armloads of character sketches. Only a small percentage ever move from those ideas and sketches to a finished book.
You know, comics were created at the same time as the cinema. And the cinema very quickly became a major art. Cartooning didn't become a major art. There's a reason for that. People don't know how to deal with drawings.
In Australia, there aren't a lot of people committed to art, so these communities form that are dedicated to music, theater, cinema, but they're very small. So, they tend to move ahead on the power of collaboration, enthusiasm and creativity.