Let Me Be Real...

I just want to be real for a moment. Not talk to you as a brand or as a cartoon dolphin, but as me - Ryan.

 On Sunday, I absolutely smashed my record at the Bondi Markets. A goal I have been aiming for since the above photo was taken (which is me last year at my first ever markets, holy cow I was so anxious) in fact, every night before the markets I’m beyond anxious and struggle to sleep.

 Sharing Fair Bump with the world has been a very nerve racking experience. While there has been some fun along this whacky journey, It’s been a wide open door to vulnerability and many, many challenges. 

Above Drawings: Some early creations. Stripy 1998, Sea Creatures 1999 early signs of my admiration for puns is visible with the inclusion of a Parrot Fish, Angel Fish, a Cat Fish and Dog Fish. 

 

Fair Bump isn’t just a meaningless logo slapped onto tees, Fair Bump is a gateway to an imaginary world that I’ve been building inside my head since the age of 6. It’s me trying to share the world that I can see in my mind with the real world, with you guys. Fair Bump is a cartoon manifestation of me; my personality, my imagination, my feelings and decades of hard work, practice and sacrifices. 

 While I launched Fair Bump in 2022, Fair Bump is something I’ve been building my entire life. 

 From around the age of 4 or 5, I have a very strong memory of my Mum and Dad telling me to jump out of the bath and run in to the lounge room, I remember standing there with a towel wrapped around me in front of the TV where I could see a guy with a moustache pointing at a computer screen. It was a behind the scenes documentary for the Lion King, he was explaining how they animated the wildebeest stampede. That is my first memory of realising that adults created cartoons. 

 Above Drawing: Binny and Slappy 2003.

 

The same feeling of joy I had watching Looney Tunes cartoons, reading Asterix comics and watching Disney movies as a child, is the same feeling I want to give to others. All I want to do is entertain and make people smile. That’s the whole point of Fair Bump. Easier said than done. 

 Fair Bump has been a fun, long and challenging journey. There have been a lot of ups and a lot of bumps along the way. Working on Fair Bump alone, Some days I really struggle, not many artists slave away on their art for it not to be seen. The whole point of art is to create something that you can share with the world in the hope that you can make people react, feel and think. In a sense, so that people connect with a part of you.

 Just like most artists, when I feel my art has been rejected, I feel a part of me has been rejected, which thanks to the social media algorithms and our 'content' obsessed world, that feeling of drowning in rejection has become a daily battle. (don’t get me started on this generative Ai bullshit, that’s another blog post for another time - also like to state Chat GPT was not used in this blog post). 

 Rejection is a brutal, dark and foggy maze that us creatives have to navigate every waking second.

Above Drawing: The gang as you know them Party Sea-ne 2023, Slappy is up the top and well, Binny is hard to miss. It's cool to be able to see 20+ years of progress, If you're a kid who draws or have a kid who draws, keep all your drawings!

 

Working on a design, character, comic, post, reel, (whatever it is) for days, weeks, months or in my case years, only for it to receive 25 ‘likes’ from my 2,700+ followers creates an avalanche of intrusive thoughts: Why didn't they like it? was it a bad idea? Is it a bad drawing? Were the colours wrong? Do people hate my art? Am I a bad artist? Was the caption bad? Is the design bad? Were the hashtags wrong? are hashtags cringe? Do people hate me? Did I post at the wrong time? Was it a bad joke? Do people hate Fair Bump? Was this a mistake? Did it offend someone? Etc. Followed by a spiralling panic attack of worry that perhaps I’m throwing my life away - The reality is, it's the algorithms strangling my reach, only showing my work to less than 5% of my followers.

Despite these shitty feelings and obstacles, something in me tells me Fair Bump has potential and that I’m not in fact crazy.  

On Sunday, I felt like I saw a small glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. 

On Sunday, a whole bunch of you, total strangers from all around the world, made me feel like I’m not crazy and that this Fair Bump thing does indeed have potential.

 I felt seen in a way that I’ve been wanting to be seen my entire life.

 When I saw your eyes lock onto a character followed by a big smile stretched across your face, that feeling you made me feel in that moment is more valuable to me than anything else. It’s validation for almost three decades of hard work, practice and sacrifices.

 Going from my lonely little studio to being able to talk to all you amazing people, I just can’t really express in enough words how much happiness it gives me! It’s incredible! Sunday alone, I had customers from Hong Kong, California, Ireland, Singapore, France, Germany, Argentina, Japan, Texas, Spain, England, Sweden, New Zealand - the list goes on. 

 To forge these connections through my characters, to talk to you, to hear your thoughts, to just have a moment where I feel like I succeeded in making someone happy through my art, honest to god, it’s just the best feeling I’ve ever felt. To know you made the choice to give me a moment of your time and some of your hard earned dollars so that you can wear something I created - it gives me goosebumps. 

 I am still high as a kite from Sunday, from the Sunday before and all the other days I’ve been at the markets and I can’t wait to be back this Sunday. 

 I can’t express how grateful I am to everyone who has stopped by my little market stall over the past year. Truly, you have made all the hard work feel worth it!

 Above Photo: First Ever Market, Glebe Markets, 2023

 

With that said, I’m not out of the woods! Just taking a moment to celebrate a little win and to thank everyone who has supported me this far!  Fair Bump feels like I wake up every day to then pull a whale up a mountain (a big, lazy, chiller whale who would rather relax on the beach). It’s hard work but it’s what I want to do, and to know there are so many of you who support what I want to do and actually like what I do - the support means everything to me. 

 Thank you, Thank you, Thank you 

 I hope I get to see you all again real soon and holy f#ck I’m excited to share what I’ve been working on with you very soon!!!!

 Thank you!! 

 Fair Bump 👊🏼

 Ryan.