Drawing on outside influences

Sun Herald Sunday 21 May 2006

Varied skills helped this animator thrive, Fran Molloy writes.

Rolf Harris seems an unlikely character on which to base a business model, but it worked well for Sydney based cartoonist and public speaker Brett Bower in his one man-show Dial a Cartoonist.

Bower left a career in animation, where he worked on Hannah Barbara’s Scooby- Doo cartoons, to work in marketing; the long hours and travelling were wearing him down. When his twin daughters were born eight years ago, Bower decided to work shorter hours and help his wife with their children.

He returned to drawing cartoons to earn a bit of money until he could find the right job. “I soon discovered that drawing cartoons for a corporate audience made quite a good living,” he says. “I had built up a good business with a very nice client base and it would have been silly to walk away from it.”

As an artist, he makes a terrible accountant, Bower admits.

“I still face the same challenges with stuff I really hate, the business activity statements and the administrative stuff. But running a successful business is not just about the drawing, it is about direct marketing and chasing debts and so on.”

Moving from a home office to a business incubator – the Sutherland Shire Hub for Economic Development – and engaging professional accountants helped him grow Dial a Cartoonists, he says.Bower says that his work spans a range of areas, some client’s email him photographs and he will return a digital cartoon. Other clients want him to be onsite, cartooning live and presenting at events – even teaching their staff how to draw cartoons.

But as a solo artist, he can’t grow his business beyond a certain point.

“My client base want Brett Bower” he says, “it would be a real struggle to bring on other artists to expand it past just being about me,”

While his skills are not unique – there are 230 cartoonists listed in the yellow pages – Bower says that his corporate presenting skills have carved him a very enjoyable niche. I have already done 15 speaking engagements this year.

“People are after something different and I am doing a show which is like a modern-day Rolf Harris”, he explains.

His presentations address business issues such as working with the right brain and left brain conflict or being creative in the workplace.

“I’ll jump up on stage and might have a series of giant easels or I’ll use a Tablet and project it on a big screen. I tell a story and draw as I go and pull people out of the audience and draw them and so forth. It is fast and it can quite exciting.”

The only thing missing are the beard and wobble board.

Brett Bower - Sydney Cartoonist
Dial a Cartoonist Studio
Ph 61 2 9008 1389
Fx 61 2 9521 6315
brett@brettbower.com.au
Unit 16 - 429 The Boulevarde, Kirrawee NSW 2232
Sydney - Australia