There’s a saying in baseball, at least I think it was baseball, I was never good at baseball, but as I understand its, it said, “You miss every pitch you don’t swing at.” That might be wrong when it comes to baseball (it’s not), but it’s definitely correct in the arts, and so I am taking another swing. I’ve been creating odd creatures most of my life, and I have really been getting back to it in the last few years. While I have been doing them mainly for fun and as a recreational activity in my spare time, lately I’ve been wondering if there was something more. I sent a link to my art to a pretty famous business podcaster and to my surprise he got back to me, he said some nice things about my work, and then he gave me some advice, to have a unified theme and a brand for the work. That got me thinking.
I have a lot of reasons why I love to create creatures. The first is because what I am creating does not exist in nature and so there is near complete creative freedom and a lot of room for originality. Secondly, ever since reading 2 Corinthians 5:17 in the King James and seeing that it says anyone who is in Christ, is a “new creature…” sparked a new interest in creating creatures. Thirdly, in these days of identity politics, I began to feel that using human characters was somewhat limiting. I didn’t want to even unintentionally insensitive. I didn’t want anyone to miss my point, because my character didn’t look like them. The creatures don’t look like anyone, by design, in hopes that they will speak to everyone. Still I was in agreement that if these characters were ever going to go beyond just being a fun hobby, I was in need of a unifying brand. The podcaster’s thought brought one to mind.
A few years back, I was creating for a daily online challenge, there were a lot of sports things mentioned in the challenge, and I started to think about super fans. These people who go beyond enthusiastic about whatever the subject of their fandom might be. Back in the seventies we called those people freaks, not because there was anything wrong with them but that they were such big fans that they freaked out over the mere mention of whatever their passion was. I was also considering becoming a licensed Rat Fink artist at the time but decided not to because I was concerned I wasn’t selling much work by design and so I thought I might not be considered. In the world of Rat Fink art, there are many things that are called “Fink:” Rat Fink, Surf Fink, Angel Fink, etc. I thought about the idea of creating a few characters and calling them FREEKZ, but life got really busy and I left the concept drop. Could FREEKZ be the brand? I started creating a few characters, and set up a Red Bubble store, for proof of concept. Will it work? I don’t know, but I’m taking a swing at it.
While I would certainly love to make some money doing this, that’s not my main motivation, but we will get to that tomorrow. For now, have a look at the store if you want.
If you’s like to see the store, and I would love for you to check it out and leave me some feedback, click here.
AMOKArts 