THE art of cartooning is alive and thriving in the 21st century, writes SARAH HUDSON

Thanks to the blue fairy folk of The Smurfs, and the superhero antics of the likes of the X-Men, Anthony Woodward's love of cartoons started early.

"As a kid, I watched a huge amount of animation and film, just the usual stuff, He-Man, the Transformers," says Anthony, 31.

"Then, in my teens, I got into the superheroes, Phantom and Spiderman, and the likes of Tintin and Asterix as well."

But Anthony, who grew up in Ballarat and studied art at Ballarat University, says his cartooning preferences have come a long way.

"When I was 17, I got serious about it," Anthony says.

"I'd make pilgrimages to comic stores in Melbourne and found there were adult comics about alternative, real everyday life."

Anthony will detail his love of cartooning and the skills involved at a series of workshops as part of the Art Gallery of Ballarat's exhibition In Your Face!

The exhibition, which runs until August 8, pays tribute to more than two centuries of cartoons, examining political and social cartoons from 1760 to 2010, from the British satirist William Hogarth to contemporary names such as Tandberg and Spooner.

Anthony's comics, though, do not belong to political and social cartooning, but instead are part of the adult-cartooning genre, a style that is more sub-culture than mainstream.

Commonly referred to as part of the growing genre of "zines" - self-published, small comics with a limited print run - Anthony's creations are autobiographical comics about his family and friends, combining his love of drawing as much as his more recent love of writing.

"I draw and write about memories and events that have an impact on me," says Anthony, who is married with two children and teaches drawing, digital art and print making at Ballarat University.

"It can sort of be like therapy, quite personal. I capture snippets of my life and what happens in my environment and character interaction.

"I find that I run into people who I don't know but who read my comics and they know things about me.

"At the moment I'm writing a story that involves my friends and I have asked for their clearance so I can use them in it. My wife doesn't mind when I write about her."

He says his style of zine comics are not social commentary or literature and it's not art - it's somewhere in between, and inspired by the work of '70s pop culture American illustrator Robert Crumb.

"Comics are a bastard child of literature and art and don't sit comfortably in either one," Anthony says.

"It's definitely an art form. The ones I'm interested in are more art than commercial. The topics are exactly what you'd find say in film, ranging from funny to serious to arty.

"Comics have their own language, an art you read as words."

But can you make a living out of adult-marketed zine comics?

"At the moment I'm not, the market for comics in Australia is small, but growing. Allen and Unwin are starting to publish people's works," Anthony says.

"My dream is to get published."

And what does Anthony think of mainstream comics, whether the humorous newspaper comic strips or the political satire?

"When most people think of cartoons they think of the quaint and funny, Disney or Garfield, or the political cartoons in newspapers," he says.

"People tell me I should send my work into newspapers but it's not the audience. I don't mind them but newspapers are not a great medium for personal expression, which is what I'm doing with my comics."