GULLIVER69
Biography
Born in the American Midwest in 1963, my interest in things macrophile began at an early age. One of the things that started it was an old black and white cartoon on television about Aladdin and the lamp; as the giant-sized genie's fingers closed around the hero, I remember being both frightened and fascinated at the same time. As a child fantasies about shrinking and dealing with giants became commonplace. I was a huge fan of tv shows and movies, like "Land of the Giants", and the Twilight Zone episode "Stopover in a Quiet Town", but "Attack of the Puppet People" quickly became my favorite of the films. In Phoenix in 1973 I saw Disney's "World's Greatest Athlete", which contains one of the most extensive macro scenes in a movie. My shrinking fantasies saw a resurgence in my early teens - I saw “The Incredible Shrinking Man” on tv for the first time in years, and it made a real impact on me.
Although I had done some sort of artwork for most of my life, I had never really expressed my macrophile ideas in this way. In high school I took two years of vocational commercial art, and I took two years of art in college. It was in college that my girlfriend introduced me to Tabitha King's book "Small World" when I told her about my fantasies. In late 1984 I met my friend Ria at a holiday party. Ria was very open and receptive to my fantasy ideas and quickly became the star of many of my cartoons on the subject. The "Ria" cartoons began as a joke between the two of us, and I'm happy to say that she contributed a great many ideas to them (she was also quite an artist in her own right). She found the whole thing rather humorous, but understood that it meant something to me. Even though we haven't seen each other in several years, the cartoon ideas keep rolling along after two decades.
In early 1997, not long after I
first got hooked up to the internet, I ran across that amazing word macrophile;
I knew instantly what it meant, and didn't even have to look up an explanation
of it. It was true...there were others that though just like I did. I wasn't
just nuts or losing my mind. Over the years my artwork has progressed, and I
enjoy pulling out some of those old cartoon ideas from years back (when I did my
first Ria cartoons there were no cell phones, no laptops, and no public
internet!). I'm now in my 40's, and I covet my anonymity online, mainly because
my family and work associates would never understand my macrophile interests. I
do like to answer e-mails and messages, and I love it when someone shoots me an
idea that I’ve never thought of. I'm just thrilled and amazed that anyone
actually understands my work, and I'm glad people like it. And, most amazing of
all, I still learn something about art every time I do a new drawing. Just look
for my little "G" logo in just about any cartoon I've done...and enjoy!
When I first saw this in a book in 1980, I suddenly knew that other people thought like I did.
