With Creator "Lem"

On the 17th of January 2010 LotsofInterviews.com interviewed a creator of the webcomic Bunny, "Lem", as part of our "Web Comic Spotlight". We talk how the comic started, about it's popularity, coming up with new ideas and how the name of the comic was chosen.

What made you want to start a web comic?

I wish I could say that I set out to draw a webcomic

deliberately, but the reality is that it was something I

started as a little bit of fun and just gained a little bit of traction. IRC is to ultimately to blame I think. A group of people talking, joking and arguing with each other about a variety of topics.

I think I ended up going to a US convention at the tail end of 2003 and a few of the people who were already making webcomics suggested that I should draw one of my own. I think as some kind of terrible punishment for something I had done in a previous life.

Hawk from Applegeeks sent me some website code and it has just grown from there. I've learnt quite a bit of technical web-development stuff from Bunny so it's been an all-round learning experience for me.

Are you a big fan of web comics yourself?

I like comics in general, but I probably read more comics which are delivered to me via the mechanism of the internet than, say, delivered to the postman or in large lorries to retail outlets.

Mostly because they are free but also because I honestly think that web comics, like their close cousins indie comics and 'zines, are where the action is. Interesting, crazy experiments happen and where some genuinely amazing stuff comes from. It's very fertile ground for all sorts of talent. Most of it for the sheer pure love of doing it.

When you first started Bunny, did you ever think he would become as big as he has done?

Not at all. I started Bunny thinking that it would last maybe for a week before I got bored and started something else.

Where did the name of the strip come from? Why did you choose Bunny’s over other animals?

I can't remember exactly, but I think it was something to do with a sketching meme that was going around right at Bunny's inception that lead to the Bunny becoming a character. The idea was you just draw a Bunny of some description.

My initial sketchings were a regular rabbit picture that was blue with the hollow eyes. The next was pink, with the big hollow eyes... and it just went from there. The character has changed over the years, as they do, but there's still the "looks like a marshmallow with ears and hollow eyes" thing running throughout.

I'm sure i could have done a comic involving cockroaches, but I doubt that would have lasted very long.

What makes your strip different from others?

I don't think that's really for me to say as people who read Bunny tend to get sometimes very different things from the strip. Some people just like rabbits, some people like explosions and things falling over and some people like heavy-handed lecturing blabberings about politics.

Who do you think has influenced your style of art?

I wish I could seriously name-drop here, but I think I subconsciously file different elements of different people's art into a sort of holding tank in my head where

it becomes all mushed together by the time I get around

to really putting any of it into practice.