JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

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.”

Here is the final cover for ELEPHANTS IN THE NEWS, very similar to that used in the mock-up shown to the publisher back in 2005, when the working title was “Pachyderms in Limerick”.

In a classic good news/bad news situation, the publisher has already sold out of all their Australian stock even before the book has been released. That is clearly good news, especially if they are prompted to do a reprint. The bad news is that my own order of books got passed over in the rush to fill orders from bona fide customers.

Thankfully, there were a few remaining boxes in a warehouse in New Zealand and, even as I write this, 144 elephants are flying through the air over the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between New Zealand And California. My plan was to have ordered twice that many copies, but fingers crossed that there will be at least some elephants waiting for me in San Francisco when I return next month.

For those of you who live in Australia and New Zealand, you should see this cover appearing on the shelves of your local bookstore starting on April 4th. If you want one, it might be a good idea to pick up a copy as soon as you see it, because they wont be able to re-order, at least in the short term.

Otherwise, it can be ordered ONLINE right now from the Pan Macmillan websites in both Australia and New Zealand, or from Piccadilly books. (Note that the cover graphic used in these online catalogs isn’t the FINAL version).

There are quite a few pics in the Elephant book that deal with grim subject matter in a ghoulish manner, this one about an elephant handler getting crushed at London Zoo being an example. The pencil sketch for this illustration was posted earlier here.

For the past few weeks I have been having fun working in Culver City on a feature animation project being directed by my two friends Tony Stacchi and Dave Feiss. When not at work I have been trying to figure out how to get around in Los Angeles without either a cell-phone or the ability to drive a car…

This is the title page for my Dad’s book “Elephants in the News”. At one point I had thought it may have been a good design for the cover, but instead the publisher used an interior illustration that had been featured on the earliest mock up, because that image had become associated with the book in the minds of so many people.

This illustration was done in coloured pencil on Canson paper and then I adjusted the saturation and contrast in Photoshop. The rough sketch for it was already posted here.

Thanks to all the people who came by the Abismo/ Nerve Bomb booth at WONDERCON last weekend. It was a low key show for me (as I didn’t have any new books and I didn’t do any shopping) but it was fun, as always, because of the people-watching and meeting old friends.

See you all at A.P.E. where I should FINALLY have my new book on sale!

A British player of the digeridoo (AKA: “the didge,” the didjeridu, and a million other spellings) who is also a researcher at Leeds University, has used the ancient Australian Aboriginal instrument as a means of communicating with Elephants at frequencies below that of human hearing.

He has tested the idea at British zoos, using a specially built sub-sonic version of the didgeridoo. The goal is to eventually use the instrument to warn Elephants away from crops and areas inhabited by humans, in parts of the world where the meeting of human and elephant traditionally leads to one or the other getting hurt.

The rough sketch for this illustration was posted here almost a year ago.

This is one of the first colour pieces for the Elephant book that I did several years ago. It was in the mock-up that was shown to the publisher and that of course led to the book being picked up by a “proper” publisher rather than being self-published, as I had originally intended.

I had to extend it to fit the new book design dimensions, because the book designer asked me to make this into a double-page spread (I have cropped off most of the facing page here however, because without the text it looks empty otherwise).

Even after having done about 50 more elephant illustrations since I finished this one, it is still one of my favourite pictures in the book.

It is wished for, written about, serenaded and talked of. It inspires some of the best in tree-graffiti, diary-entries, soap-operas and pop-songs, but while commonplace in the popular culture, in real-life LOVE can be very hard to find, and once found it is often accompanied by discussions about “where it is all going” that somehow… make it go.

Hate makes its own way in the world like the bird-flu virus, but LOVE needs our support, people! We must tend to it, and nurture it like a little baby hatchling if we want it to grow into a fine, big, majestically-soaring eagle in the awesome, technicolour sunset!

Wont you do your little part to keep the LOVE alive? Today is International Love Day, so stand up outa your chair, get out there, spread the good vibes, and do some serious LOVING!

Almost a year ago I posted the sketch that formed the basis for this illustration. The book contains a limerick that references a beauty pageant held each year in Thailand for bigger ladies (to raise money for elephant conservation) known as the MISS JUMBO QUEEN PAGEANT.

The latest news about the ELEPHANT book is that it is finished being printed in China and is now being shipped to Australia for its April release down there. While I was busy finishing the illustrations on this book, my Father actually wrote a SECOND book (about a famous Australian racehorse called PHAR LAP) that will be released at around the same time by the same publisher. I hear that my Dad is already being lined up for radio interviews as part of a double-pronged PR blitz for the two books in Australia and New Zealand.

More news as it comes to hand!

Even though it is about a very grim subject, the hunting and poaching of elephants, this is one of my favourite illustrations that I did for the book, mainly because of the colours. Choosing a colour palette is something that I always wrestle with, but in this case I was rather happy with the way that the limited palette came out.

It remains to be seen whether it will reproduce in print the same way it looks on my monitor… but I should find out soon enough; I am expecting to see some advance copies in of the printed book sometime in February.