What The Net Did

What is the main influence that the internet has had on your life?

When moved to the UK I enrolled in a local art college to do my Master’s degree in Illustration.

My classmate Ellen Lindner (and now studio mate) introduced me to LiveJournal, where I started blogging, and where I began to see all the amazing things happening on the indie comics scene; I was able to jump in and make comics  inspired by both real life events and the other bloggers.

Through a comics Yahoo group on the internet, I met comics expert Paul Gravett, which hooked me up with an excellent British publisher named David Fickling, who’s been publishing my picture books and comics ever since.

I try to blog every day, and I meet lots of people who already know me from my blog. Blogging helps me organise my thoughts and, since I have a terrible memory, help me remember what I did more than two days ago. I set myself a goal of posting a drawing every day, so  It challenges me to come up with fresh, experimental work. I don’t always meet this target, but just the existence of the blog reminds me of it.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of publicity events for my books, and trying to keep a balance between answering the e-mails and doing my creative work has become a problem. But it wouldn’t be any easier if people were ringing me up on the phone; at least e-mail gives me a chance to gather my thoughts and I have a written record of what we’ve planned. And it’s always lovely to meet the person I’ve been e-mailing for so long.

For me, the internet is ultimately valuable only as a means of enabling more meaningful, real-life encounters with people. I like people, not computer screens.

Have there been any negative aspects?

When I first started working a an illustrator, the internet allowed me to work from London for a small company based back in the USA.

While I was grateful for the work, it made my working relationship with my colleagues a bit strange, since we almost never met each other, and much of the time I was very isolated, particularly as a new arrival into the country.

We had a lot of disagreements about the projects, and because I didn’t work side by side with the people, I naively assumed the held similar views on certain issues to me, only to discover quite dramatically that this wasn’t the case.

When that job ended with battling lawyers, the situation left me very shell-shocked. 

If the internet was a person and you met them in a pub, what would you say to them?

“We’ve been seeing an awful lot of each other recently. But fancy a pint while you’re here?”

http://www.jabberworks.co.uk/

http://jabberworks.livejournal.com/

What The Net Did: a photography project by Laura Babb 

www.laurababb.co.uk