JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

Here’s another one of the brush-pen sketches I did while sitting at the Abismo/Nerve Bomb booth at last year’s Comic-Con.

As to THIS year’s comic Con, I am still trying to figure out if I have enough time left to make something ELSE to sell, in addition to the new Elephant book (and selling some prints of the illustrations) especially as my work schedule wont leave a lot of spare time in the next few months…

I have already blocked out a lot of Rocket Rabbit stories, but past experience tells me that I wont be able to get any of them done in time for July and I would prefer not to rush them. So I had thought of doing a little book of pin-ups of established characters, but it seems like a lot of work on something that isn’t really “mine,” so now I am leaning towards a MINI-comic of some kind.

Drive-In theatres are fondly remembered for providing teenagers with both a cover story (a trip to the movies) and a relatively private place (a car) for their furtive, mutual anatomical research. But they were also frequented by families with small children. Before the ages of video and DVD, a drive-in theatre was where parents could see movies without having to feel self-conscious about their bawling kids. No need for a baby sitter for the tiny ones, just bring them along. Sealed off in your (more or less) soundproof bubble you weren’t likely to bother the other patrons, who were probably families themselves, or teenagers who had more pressing things (ie; the pressing of “things”) on their minds. But you could easily bother each other, cooped up in there during a double bill of “Blue-Beard’s Ghost” and “Herbie the Love Bug”. With all the bickering and crying and spilled drinks and whatnot there was often as much tragedy and comedy and drama in the car, as on the screen.

I remember going to the drive-in to see family films when there were little babies in our family (and I was small myself). In particular I was very affected by seeing “BAMBI” when I was 5 years old. My brother Jo was still a small baby and provided his own vocal accompaniment from the front seat where he was attended to by my Mother, already pregnant with next brother, Rob (who would be along to help out with the yodelling chores in a few months). Despite the occasional noise, and being treated to moments of SENSE-AROUND when baby-bro had to have his underthings changed right there in front of me, I was very much engrossed in what was going on up on the screen.

Like a lot of children, the death of BAMBI’s Mother affected me very deeply and I’m absolutely sure that I added my own blubbering to the general commotion within our car at that point. Parents sometimes like to shield their kids from such raw emotions, but this moment of tragedy is a big part of one of my most powerful early-childhood memories. And it wasn’t over yet, BAMBI was about to affect me in perhaps an even more powerful way; it was while at the drive-in watching “Bambi” that I realised that this film was somehow different to other movies… IT WAS DRAWINGS… Moving and talking and seeming to be alive… and then seeming to be killed… drawings making me feel both happy, and then sad. The tears of anguish were barely even dry on my face before I started to wonder how this could be so…. What kind of magic was this? I could not grasp how it was possible for these drawings to be alive. It was a singular moment; I was both pulled into and popped out of, the movie at the same time.

I had always liked cartoons, but never thought about how they were made, in fact I don’t think that I had ever thought about how ANY movies were made until this moment watching Bambi at the Drive-In theatre in Hobart. If I had thought about it at all, I probably thought that films were documentaries and the events on-screen were really happening (Reality TV in today’s parlance). But the realisation that this film was made of drawings made that idea an impossibility. Mum and Dad now had their hands full. Baby on the one hand and on the other, a 5 year old who needed some answers. They both did their best to explain the rudiments of the animation process, but it seemed completely unbelievable. Tiny drawings? What? How? I wasn’t apt to take their explanations at face value either; I hadn’t forgotten the great lengths they had taken to try and dupe me with that Santa Claus nonsense (which I never believed in for a moment, much to the great disappointment of my Mother). You never knew what kind of hokum grown ups were going to put over on you next….

Behind our car at the back of the drive-in, in the same building as the snack bar, there was a tiny window allowing patrons to peek into the projection booth. In an attempt to convey the truth of the animation process to me, my Dad lifted me up high enough that I could see in. I watched a big machine spool out a long shiny ribbon that passed through a ray of light, sending a flickering beam out through the main window and onto the huge screen, in front of which our family car was parked, under the night sky. I was told that there were thousands of hand drawn little pictures on that strip of film and through some process as yet beyond my ability to comprehend, they looked alive when put through the projector and light went through them.

It sounded like some kind of magic to me and even If it wasn’t “real” magic then it was clearly the next best thing. The sense of wonder from that night stayed with me for quite some time; certainly long enough to get me into the animation industry. I can still conjure up a ghost of it even now after 25 years in the biz.

These days of course, people don’t need to go to Drive-In movies. You can watch whatever you like, and whenever you like at home on your groovy big-screen home entertainment centre, or for that matter just go ahead and take the tiny kids to the multiplex, no problem. Nobody is going to hear them over the all cellphone chit-chat anyway.

My apartment is now home to a herd of elephants. They arrived from New Zealand a short time ago and they will be staying with me at least until this weekend’s A.P.E small-press comics show in San Francisco. (To see all the elephant illustrations that I’ve posted in this blog so far, go here).

It is such a relief to finally have these books in my hands. I often have bad-luck shipping stories, but this time there were an unusual number of SNAFUs, even for me. Thankfully, that is all behind me now, and the good news is that the book came out very well indeed. The publisher and designer did a very nice job on the printing and binding. It isn’t exactly like anything I’ve seen before. The end-papers are glued to the cover as in a hardbound book but the cover itself is a lighter stock than a regular hardback, so it feels like something in-between. I like the size very much. Even though I had nothing to do with choosing the dimensions myself, it is smallish, roughly the size and shape of my self-published books.

As you can see in the above photograph (all kindly taken by Rhode) the publisher has also outdone himself in the display department, making some neato little customised book-stands that feature a sculpted representation of the elephant on the cover.

I will be selling my copies here in San Francisco at roughly the same time as the official BOOK LAUNCH, which is happening in my Home Town in Australia. My Dad will be launching this book, along with another that he wrote in the time I took to illustrate this one. I am sorry not to be able to attend the book launch myself in person but I have to be here to sell MY copies. This collaboration with my Dad has brought a lot of joy to the both of us and I do believe that some of the fun in making it has been captured on the pages, so I hope that some of you may get a kick out of this book too. After raising these pachyderms, now I am hoping to find some good homes to send them to. If any of you are interested, then see me at APE this weekend, at COMIC-CON in July, or E-MAIL ME.

The book is on sale now in Australia and New Zealand, but many of the stores that were offering it online down there have already sold out. Because of the demands made on the stock, I was only able to get about half the number of books that I had intended to order, so I am not sure how long these will last.

BUY NOW to avoid disappointment!!

This pic illustrates one of MANY stories in the media involving fine artists who use elephant dung in their art, quite literally creating “shitty paintings.”

I find it hard to be truly original, even when really trying to be. Countless times, I have hit upon what I think is a new and fantastic idea, only to discover that it has either been done before, or that someone else is working on a similar idea at exactly the same time.

In days gone by, if I heard that another project touched on similar territory as an idea of my own, my instinct was NOT to find out any more about the other project. I had an inflated sense of my own innate originality, and simply assumed that I would naturally come up with something different. These days my feeling is the opposite. I have learned that people of similar backgrounds, and sensibilities are likely to have similar ideas at around the same time (probably because we are all drinking in the same influences which inspire similar ideas) and therefore my new strategy is to find out as much as possible about the competition, so as to steer my own project as far away from it as I can.

The bad reviews that I have gotten for my self-published comics mostly focus on two things; my silly sense of humour and use of puns (I am told that puns are the lowest form of comedy) and the fact that my books remind readers of other books that they have already read.

The first critique I make no apologies for; I like silliness and whimsy. The second critique stings but I have no idea how to address it, because I don’t know how to come up with a truly unique idea. Is there such a thing? Even if I do some day hit upon something absolutely original (I live in hope) what do I do in the meantime? If I waited till that singular idea came to me before I started, I may be waiting forever. I do have some ambitious stories that I would like to tell someday, but I don’t yet have the storytelling chops to do them justice.

Although I work these days as a “Story-Artist,” I don’t really have much input in the story itself. That is always generated by someone else, and I know I have a lot to learn about true story-telling. What I DO bring to the game is a childish knack for thinking up and staging physical bits of business; the pratfalling, flatulent stuff that cartoon characters do on screen as they follow the story arcs plotted out for them by bigger brains than mine. The better term for what I do is the older one: “Gag-Artist.” I am not sure why that has fallen out of favour…

On my own projects, my approach has been to go with whatever idea I have NOW for want of something better. Plus, I have consciously decided to start with some silly stories because I think that there is a bit more latitude for learning within comedy. Hopefully, when I am struck by true inspiration someday, I will have already amassed some storytelling skills along the road.

I am still working at SONY PICTURES, which is on the properties of what used to be called UNITED ARTISTS, MGM and COLUMBIA. One of the novelties of working at this particular animation studio is being across the road from a real Hollywood movie backlot, the CULVER STUDIOS, where a lot of classic films have been shot, including “Citizen Kane” the original “King Kong” and “Gone With the Wind”. Sometimes we animation geeks go to the backlot to have lunch in the studio cafeteria, where all the movie crews and movie extras get their lunch. (I guess the big wig directors and movie stars get fed elsewhere) Supposedly a TV show about LAS VEGAS is currently shooting and sometimes the cafeteria is frequented by extras dressed as dancing girls in skimpy costumes. So far I haven’t been fortunate enough to witness that spectacle myself.

This part of Los Angeles, known as Culver City, is where a lot of the earliest studios set up shop when LA started to become movie land in the 1920s and is consequently full of movie history. Not far away is the Culver Hotel, which was once owned by CHARLIE CHAPLIN and accommodated the midgets who were cast as MUNCHKINS while the movie THE WIZARD OF OZ was being filmed. According to the local lore they were a pretty rowdy and raunchy mob. Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy shot many of their films in the streets around where I work. The HAL ROACH studios used to be nearby but I haven’t figured out exactly where yet. the TOM AND JERRY cartoons were made a few blocks away on another SONY backlot (what used to be the MGM lot).

Although I am slowly starting to find some of the charms that Los Angeles keeps so well hidden, my initial impressions of this town were anything but positive. The very first time I came to LA was as a tourist, years before I ever settled in the USA. I was visiting my pal TONY in San Francisco and we took a greyhound bus to LA, arriving at 5 AM at the downtown bus station in the heart of the notorious skid row; a place which makes San Francisco’s Tenderloin seem quaint by comparison. The scene around the LA bus station I will never forget. Bewildered foreign backpackers huddled within the light of the run down and filthy bus station, as a horde of predatory lowlifes swarmed around outside in the dark, like zombies on the make. We had to plunge into the seething filth and wade several blocks to connect with another downtown bus line, and I simply could not believe the desolate scene that we passed along the way. It was so decrepit, creepy and seedy that it could have been a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie, such as Escape from New York. But this was no movie set; it was a real place in the town where they make those movies. We passed buildings bashed to pieces, their scraps used to make bonfires that raggedy people hunched over in the morning cold. We were shadowed by a sinister little band of scumbags trying to sell everything from heroin to useless pieces of old bicycles. By that point in my world travels I was certainly no stranger to poverty and decrepitude, having spent several years traveling in a lot of the 3rd world. But that scene in downtown LA rates as one of the grimmest I have ever seen.

Consequently, the first time I ever worked in LA (about 10 years ago) I was absolutely dreading coming down here. My initial bad impressions had by then been fortified by years of living in the Bay Area, where one of the favourite pastimes is LA-bashing. Surprisingly, I enjoyed those several months in LA, but I think it was because I spent the whole time in Santa Monica, which is an easy part of town to deal with for those of us who cannot drive; there is a decent enough public transport system and there are several neighbourhoods were you can get around just fine on foot, which I did a lot of. I spent most of my free time walking around, because I didn’t really know anyone down here back then.

This time however, I have quite few friends living down here, mostly cronies from my years spent working at Colossal Pictures and ILM. Although quite a few of them used to participate in the LA-bashing game, they all seem to be living happily down here now, and in one case there is even some San Francisco bashing going on (”San Francisco is SO provincial”). Hilarious.

Along with Tony and Gale and old pal Anne, I went to see the Scottish comedian BILLY CONNOLLY live on stage in a one man show. He opened his act by addressing the issue of rampant LA-bashing, noting that he has never understood why everyone hates the place so much. Thereafter, he stood up and rambled on for over two hours in a shapeless but hilarious, meandering performance that was really no more than a long winding string of reminiscences and parenthetical observations evoked by those memories. Normally, I am a fan of these sorts of things having some underlying structure, but he made the whole thing hang together just through the force of his charming storytelling. I later found out that his show was different each night, but the performance I attended ended on the strongest laugh of the show. His story of the time he was trapped in a sleeping bag with a faulty zipper, along with a girl he had been planning to get physical with, but who was going into the tell-tale mini convulsions that indicate someone is about to puke… his description of his frantic, and futile, attempts to flee the scene had me laughing so hard that my face hurt. It felt like I had been sunburned.

Thanks to ANSON JEW, who kindly drove me all over the place, I was able to see some great art shows. This past weekend we attended the Society of Illustrators show, and the weekend before that we saw a MARK RYDEN show at a gallery on Melrose where they had some really huge paintings on display. The biggest of the paintings on show (pictured here) sold for $800,000. The brushwork and finish on these pics was really something to see. Many of them had some very elaborate and whacky custom built frames.

Then we went to La Luz de Jesus gallery and then on to Alhambra to visit the GALLERY NUCLEUS, which is actually a bookstore but with a good portion of the space devoted to art display. That night the place was jammed full of hipsters throwing money around, at a book launch by some of the Pixar crew. LOU ROMANO, DON SHANK, NATE WRAGG and SCOTT MORSE have just put out a book called THE ANCIENT BOOK OF MYTH AND WAR. I was happy to see them and some other Pixar friends who had come down for the weekend.

For my slice of LA outdoor splendor I made sandcastles on Santa Monica Beach with the daughters of my friends John & Carol, and last Sunday Anne introduced a group of us to the huge, yet lovely Huntington Gardens near Pasadena.

I am still trying to wrap my mind around what (or even where) Los Angeles actually is… but I have begun to see it as a group of smaller cities rather than one big one. This vast urban sprawl without a focal point is mostly bland and in many cases even downright ugly, but there is a lot of history and culture here if you know where to look. I am beginning to think that is a terrible place to visit but it might be not a bad place to stay, once the ground-rules have been figured out…