JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

Work has been busy lately, very busy indeed. Which is a good problem to have in many ways, but I haven’t had much spare time for making comics this year. Even though I thumbnailed out several comics stories at the end of 2005, the combination of animation work and a side project with my Dad has meant that I haven’t had any time to finish off a new comic book in time for this years Comic Con, and the side project wont be printed till later…

Rhode and I just found out that Abismo/Nerve Bomb has landed a great Comic Con booth space this year in an excellent location (BOOTH #1428). Rhode has quite a bit of new material to sell but sadly I don’t have any new books. Once again; not the worst problem to have, especially as many exhibitor friends are unhappy with their booth locations…

To ensure that such a sweet Booth doesn’t go to waste, my NEW stuff this year will be original art, which I have never sold before. I have quite a few doodles which might be sell-able if I take the time to add in the details on the hands and feet which I often lazily leave out of sketches.

I’ll try to crank out some more water colours or coloured pencil pics in the next few weeks. Definately lots of scribbles of my own characters and maybe even some pinups of famous fan favourite characters… I haven’t made up my mind about that yet…

My latest way to waste time online is called YouTube. Apart from avoiding work by watching stupid pet tricks I have managed to find some great animation on there, so I can safely pass off at least some my time wasting as “research”. Qualifying as both a stupid pet trick AND funny animation is Dog Judo. To learn more about the canine martial arts, visit the Online Dojo.

The short that really inspired me to make this post is Burning Safari, a hilarious altercation between Monkeys and Robots. How can you go wrong with that concept? It is beautifully designed and animated and was made at the Gobelins school in France. I would love to know how that school consistantly produces such great animation at the student level. What’s their secret? There’s plenty more good stuff to see at the Gobelins Website.

Australian animator Bernard Derriman won a contest to make a video for the band TISM’s song Everyone’s had more sex than me. Maybe you saw the resulting flash short when it was emailed around the world. Cold hard Flash interviewed him (here and here) about the video and his Shorts for Arj Barker. There are more of his shorts on His website.

Without the glorious internet I doubt that I ever would have discovered the the joys of the charming children’s TV show Pocoyo. The design and animation, both done in Spain, are really super. More can be learned about Pocoyo at the Pocoyo website and the Pocoyo Blog.

One of my favourite designers, the mighty Nicolas Marlet, is the character designer on the upcoming (2008) Dreamworks film Kung-Fu Panda which is being directed by my dear chum mr John Stevenson. Right there you have two great reasons that I have high hopes for this film. Plus, bonus points for having Jack Black involved as the voice of the titular character. I am really looking forward to seeing an entire movie’s worth of Nicolas Marlet’s beautiful characters.

Another good friend of mine, Patrick Awa, has been working at Sprite Animation Studios designing characters on their Monster Samurai Project. It features a cool quirky design style that fuses traditional Japanese motifs with a Hong Kong Vinyl toy sensibility. For more of that whimsical fusion style check out their take on the classic Journey to the West legend (which is sometimes referred to as the legend of the Monkey King).

Last but not least is a piece by an animator by the name of Mike Adair, who recorded a whacky conversation with his infant son and then used it as the sound track for a flash cartoon. The result is called David’s New Snail.

When I started to really take drawing seriously, in my early teens, I couldn’t get enough tasty artwork in front of my hungry young eyeballs. I grew up in the pre-video age in a small country town with no comics shop. So for visual stimulation I had whatever movies came to the local cinema or the two local TV channels, and the other random eye-food I could gobble-down at the newspaper store (which amounted to Mad Magazine and Heavy Metal magazine). There certainly weren’t any other kids (or adults) interested in drawing that I knew, so I had nobody to bounce ideas off of, or to be inspired by artistically. I didn’t find a creative community until I left my home town to start work.

I was single minded about getting into animation but I wasn’t aware of any courses that taught it back then. Thankfully, the animation studios in Sydney were prepared to hire people based solely on some pretty sparse portfolios. In those days, the typical young cartoonist’s portfolio consisted of lumpy drawings of awkwardly posed, axe-wielding barbarians, usually accompanied by equally lumpy warrior maidens wearing brass bikinis that barely contained their doughy warrior buttocks. You get the picture; Acres of flesh, but no anatomy in sight. Thankfully, against this backdrop, my crappy sheaf of scribbly cartoon drawings stood half a chance, and I got a job as an in-betweener, working happily on some truly attrocious cartoons. I am glad that I got into the industry when I did because it wouldn’t be so easy these days…

The calibre of young artists has shot up, way up. Students just getting out of art school have portfolios full of good drawings, and paintings, all beautifully done and displaying a broad range of influences, not just Mad magazine and TV cartoons. I see some of these folios submitted at the studios I work at, and they impress me no end. I wouldn’t dream of being able to assemble a folio like that even now, let alone in my twenties. Curse these young pups! They are so much better than I remember any of my peers being at a similar age, and I blame the pernicious influences of the damn internet! I am convinced that part of the reason for the hike in talent has something to do with the wealth of inspiration and community the web now provides for budding artists.

I wish it was available when I was in my teens. Exchanging ideas with other artists, including my artist-heroes, via email or message boards and forums would have been like a protein-shake for my creative development…

The amount of great artwork online from around the world, viewable at just the click of a mouse amazes me… Illustrators, fine-art painters, cartoonists, designers, animators… I can see art by artists of all ages and experience levels, from people who perform a behind the scenes role at media companies, to those who may still be in school. Without the web how would we ever have seen all this stuff?

Which may also explain my perception of an increase in talent: Whereas before I was only seeing the artwork of people that I met face to face, now I can see artwork by top talents from all over the planet?

Whatever the case may be, I am glad of my access to all this stuff out there. I find fresh inspiration every day.