JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

The site overhaul continues… The latest area to get a re-do is the COMICS section. The old stuff that was always there has been re-organized so that it is (hopefully) easier to navigate. Additionally there has been some new artwork and other stuff added, with more to be plugged in over the next few weeks…

I have added an entirely new PHOTOS section. At the moment it just contains some photos taken recently at cons and parties, but I will add some artsy fartsy pics to it later…

On Thursday December 15th the kind hearts at Maverix Studios are having another of their art-auction/fundraiser-parties, this time to raise money for the Earthquake in Pakistan. They have often raised money for good causes, and it’s getting to be something of a tradition for them to do this. The parties are fun to attend and participate in, and artists of different fields from all over the Bay Area (and sometimes beyond) get involved. In the past there have been donations by heavy hitters in the fields of animation and comic related art, fine-art, sculpture and photography. So if you are an art collector there are some great bargains to be had, in a variety of categories.

The first time Maverix held a fund-raiser was when our good friend Mike Murnane injured his eye and had no insurance. A group of his friends pitched in to donate art and $6,000 was raised during a spirited bidding battle between his pals for art. Just recently the Maverix raised $9,000 for the Charlotte Maxwell complementary clinic. The most raised was in the Tsunami Relief auction where an absolutely incredible $25,000 was raised in one night.

It has been terrible a terrible year for natural disasters, where even wealthy countries were not spared, but the Earthquake in Pakistan was particularly devastating. The Maverix fund-raiser is during the holiday shopping season; why not give some art to your loved ones this Christmas, knowing that 100% of the price you spent will go to those in need?

Maverix is looking for art donations, volunteers to help prep and hang the art, and of course they are also looking for people to come by and party, and throw money around. So if you feel qualified to help out in any of those areas you can find further details on how to do so (and the exact street address and time) on the Maverix Blog.

Hopefully, I’ll see you there!

Over in the FOLIO section I have finally started to add some images that have been stored on my FTP for a while, but that were never added to the galleries sections. Most of them were sketches and cheesecake pinups that I posted on some illustration forums. Some of them have appeared in my Gourmet Gruel sketchbooks that I sell at cons and some other ones I uploaded but never made thumbnails for. There’ll be more images showing up over the next few weeks so please come back and look for the new stuff.

I also overhauled and regorganized the LINKS page which now includes a couple of new categories, including BLOGS. There has been an explosion of blogs by animation folk in the last few months, and there really is a lot of fabulous stuff to look at out there on the web these days. Be sure to visit the new blogs by LOU ROMANO and JEFF PIDGEON.

AND there are a bunch of other neat new links. Lately I’ve been getting a kick out of MULLET JUNKY… I may even get a mullet myself… (have to mull it over…). Another fun site is the BENNET ROBOT WORKS which features great robot sculptures made out of found bits of industrial junk. And if you like them enough the pieces are for sale.There are also a few new art sites so please go take a look see…

Thanks to a tip from Janine Dawson, I found out that Rocket Rabbit was featured in the RADAR TRAP puzzle page section of the Sydney Morning Herald a few weeks ago. My brother Dominic provided me with this scan. The topic for the puzzle was “Obscure Super heroes” and some of the other mighty characters featured in the actual puzzle part were BIONIC MINNOW, and the EMERALD MANTIS… but who better to actually illustrate the theme of super obscurity than everyone’s favourite nuclear powered robot rabbit?

Anyway, that was a pleasant surprise… I contacted the editor to ask how he found out about Rocket and it turns out that he did all his research at the INTERNATIONAL HERO website. Speaking of Rocket Rabbit and his appearances in the press, RR#1 was just reviewed By Randy Lander in his SNAP JUDGEMENTS column on The Fourth Rail:

ROCKET RABBIT #1
by James Baker (Nerve Bomb Comics)

Don and I first reviewed Rocket Rabbit and the Professor in Nerve Bomb about two years ago. At the time, we both found Baker’s work visually appealing but unfocused in terms of story. Rocket Rabbit #1 is a step in the right direction, retaining the impressive art and making much more of a stab at a coherent story, although Baker’s balls-to-the-wall comedy approach still retains a flavor of something overly familiar. However, it’s familiar in a good way, and I certainly found plenty to chuckle at in these pages, as well as enjoying the visual spectacle.

Rocket Rabbit and the Professor are do-gooder heroes with a bizarre mix of creator/creation and boyfriend/girlfriend tension, but they are essentially just engines of destruction and comedy. Whether or not they win is immaterial, and Rocket Rabbit is not a book to look for if you’re seeking answers to the questions of right and wrong or a story that poses any questions deeper than “Wouldn’t it be funny if…?” However, for those who enjoyed the manic humor of Sky Ape or Scurvy Dogs, or the goofy parody of The Tick, Rocket Rabbit might be worth a look.

Where Baker really excels is in his artwork and design sense. I saw the Rocket Rabbit booth at San Diego, and it caught my eye everytime I went by, since it’s such a striking visual, and the pure mayhem of the super brawl at Pow Palace is a visual delight as well. I also really got a kick out of Baker’s amusing villain “The Ass” whose powers and personality change depending on what type of ass he is (smart, dumb, lame, jack, etc.) as well as the Apes of Wrath and the notion of a superhero president who seems to have more than a little in common with flamboyant professional wrestlers. If cheesy puns and mayhem are your kind of humor, Rocket Rabbit is your kind of book.

This review is on the positive side of ambivalent (”GOOD”, with a few caveats) so I give it about a 7 out of 10 on my patented Ego Stroke Meter. This is certainly a marked improvement over the first review they gave me a few years ago, which was on the negative side of ambivalent (”BAD” with a few caveats). I’m sorry guys, but I could only give THAT review a measly 2 out of 10 on the E.S.M.

I have re-organized things over in the FOLIO section. Now every thumbnail loads at the same time and you can choose from a menu of over 250 pix… Previously, visitors to my site needed to perform a million mouse clicks before they saw any pictures; carpal-tunneling through submenu after submenu…

I had it organized that way before in view of the low band width of a few years back, but these days that is less of an issue, especially if you are out there actively looking for art sites; you probably have a fast connection. If that is NOT the case then my apologies, you’ll have to wait a minute or so for all the pix to load.

There are a few images on my FTP that I’ve never added to my FOLIO. these are often pics I’ve posted on forums or in this here blog, but I never made a thumbnail for. I will do that soon so it is all up to date. Hereafter the newest pics will intially appear at the top (the area that loads first) in a gallery called NEW.

As I look at some of the pix themselves I realize that a lot are small and a bit dark and grainy. Some of them are literally the first scans I ever did on a computer back in 2000, when all this stuff was new-fangled and blowing my tiny mind. So at some point I would like to rescan some of the art and resize it as well. Also in future I want to set up all my pictures in a database so that visitors can search for pics by date, project title, subject, medium, and so on. I guess that means I need to learn PHP… and God knows how long that will take. So for now this organization overhaul will have to do. You may have already noticed that this NEWS page is already searchable. Just enter a search term in the text field under the ARCHIVES on the right hand side (you’ll need to scroll down) and you can find what ever there is to be found.

Apart from organization, I have been trying to conform all the pages on my site to the same aesthetic. Once I redo my STORE and COMICS sections that will be finally done and there will be a somewhat uniform layout to each section. Anyway, let me know what you think about the layout change.

I just spent halloween in Maryland with my brother Jo and his family. This is a shot of myself with Dash and Anakin (nephews JACK and TYLER), taken at the Baltimore zoo during the “Boo at the Zoo”