JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

Another pic for my Dad’s book to illustrate a story about the Bangkok police implanting working elephants with tracking devices, to keep them off of the downtown streets:

Lately I have been in lockdown; just sleeping or working on the illustrations, with periodic breaks to eat, when I normally head out of the house to an internet cafe. I can get some change of scenery, food and some emails (and maybe a quick blog post!) done all in one go.

I needed just such a break a few nights ago but it was late in the evening and the cosy internet-cafe I normally go to for such a break was closed. So I took my laptop over to another cafe that I knew was open late. It was crowded inside and the music was loud, so I sat outside in the fresh air to do some emailing and web-surfing on my laptop as I drank my hot chocolate. Late in the evening is a good time to send emails to Australia (where the book production is happening) because the working day has already begun down there. I had just sent an email to the designer of the ELEPHANT book, when some snatch-and-grab/crack-head scooped my laptop and ran off with it, bolting downhill into San Francisco’s charming Tenderloin neighbourhood.

!!!!!

After a brief startled pause, I gave chase, trying to make up the head-start he had on me, sometimes running down the road in the oncoming traffic. I was giving this pursuit everything I had, and there was some great motivation: ALL the artwork for my dear old Dad’s Elephant book was on that laptop!

As I chased the junky, the life of the ELEPHANT BOOK was flashing before my eyes…

After about three blocks running as hard as I could, he wasn’t getting any further away, but I wasn’t getting closer either and I was reaching the limit of my middle aged adrenaline capacity, whereas he had both youth and the perfomance enhancing properties of CRACK on his side. I didn’t think that I could keep up with him for much longer…

Mercifully, I was helped out by some folks in the street, who clearly read the situation when they saw a wiry dude clutching a laptop chased by a red-faced puffy bloke screaming obscenities. They realised that they needed to intervene and spare me a heart attack. Several people on sidewalks along the way tried to grab the thief or trip him up, and a few times he did stumble, giving me the chance to gain on him. Pretty soon there was one hell of a hulla-balloo; random passers by yelling “STOP THAT GUY!” and me yelling stuff I can’t write here.

As he rounded a corner, a group of people who had time to react in advance, tripped the thief up for good and I got the laptop back…

In other good news, one of the guys who tripped up the evil doer absolutely beat the stuffings out of him, after wrenching the laptop out of his fingers. This BADASS Samaritan briefly paused his expert pummelling of the baddie to give me a chance to get in some hits myself (almost like he was graciously offering me the last slice of a tasty desert) but I declined; I was too busy gripping onto the laptop with both hands… and bent double trying to get my breath back. Besides, the (muscular, tattooed, and menacing) dude beating on the baddie was doing a superb job on his own, and I didn’t want to mess up his syncopating rhythm. So the miscreant definately got a form of punishment before he limped away, and he didn’t look in very good condition…

Even though the wretch was tried, convicted and punished in the court of STREET JUSTICE, In hindsight I should have held him and called the cops, because that very same creep is probably going to pull the very same slimy move again… Although after that savage walloping, his getaway speed may not be quite as impressive… I really wasn’t thinking straight. I ALSO ought to have gotten the name of the anonymous avenger who helped me out (a tattooed SUPER HERO in my eyes) so I could buy him dinner, a beer or a monogrammed pair of brass-knuckles or something. He was in the middle of helping some friends move, and they just headed off after shaking my hand. I did get a chance to thank him profusely, between gulps of oxygen, but I really should have got his phone number for a follow up…

But at that point I was already pre-occupied with the thought that I had left my shoulder bag on the table outside the coffee shop 3 blocks away and that it contained my check-book and some other stuff. It occurred to me that if this thief was an experienced operator he would have a partner to scoop my bag when I head off in pursuit. So I ran as fast as I could back to the cafe… When I got there, sure enough, my bag was gone and I figured that I had to call the bank and tell them a check-book had been stolen… but I still counted myself very lucky that I had gotten my laptop back especially when I found out that, remarkably, despite the crack-head’s spectacular sprawling wipe-out, it seems to be working OK…

At that point a guy came up and congratulated me on getting it back. He had seen the snatch from across the street and wanted to hear the story of its recovery. I told him what had happened, and that the only minor bummer was the loss of my bag. He told me that my bag wasn’t stolen; it was now waiting for me in the coffee shop as he had taken it in there for safe-keeping.

I was very lucky to have had so many people help me out that day. Even now, a few days later, I get horror-shudders when I consider what today would be like if I had NOT gotten my laptop back…

GAaAaAaH!

As we are soon coming up on HALLOWEEN I thought I’d post the most macabre illustration in the elephant book. Behold, if you dare:

This illustrates a true story of an elephant who trampled some poor guy to death and then kept the corpse, carrying it around for several weeks. I guess that elephants like to keep their “hunting trophies” too.

Speaking of hunting, if you like a cartoon that goes for your funny bone rather than your heart-strings, go and see OPEN SEASON which is playing at theatres now. Reviewers are quick to point out that this film enters territory already covered in other fims released in the last year, which may be so, but I think this one does it funnier. It is also rather beautiful to look at; some of the most gorgeously art directed poop gags ever. There is no higher recommendation on the BAKER-scale than that.

Here is another picture using my new SPLATTER, SCAN and FIDDLE technique:

I am pretty happy with how this one came out, though I may come back to it later and pump up the ZAP effect a little… It may be too subtle at this point? But while I think on that, in the meantime I have plenty more to do in the next few weeks…

I have a bit of a hard time when it comes to painting. I think it is the unpredictability of it… Paint just doesn’t do what I tell it to do. My paintbrush is not so well behaved as my 2B pencil, say. Of course, living with the happy accidents is part of the fun of it, especially if you can fiddle with the stuff in good ole Photoshop and regain a modicum of control.

Recently I was working very hard. As I was riding the train into work early one morning, already feeling beat-down tired before the day had even begun, I tried to put that particular schedule-crunch in perspective… It was not the hardest that I have EVER worked, but certainly the hardest I have worked in many years.

After some reflection, I realised that the hardest I ever worked was on the worst stuff I ever worked on. Namely some really wretched Saturday morning cartoons in the late 1980’s. This shouldn’t have surprised me… It had already occurred to me years ago that it takes just as much hard work to make a bad show as it does to make a great one… but I guess I had forgotten that lesson over time.

When people express their displeasure with a film that they do not like (or a comic book, or what have you) they frequently bad-mouth the people who worked on it, as if only lazy talentless morons could be responsible. In some cases that may indeed be the explanation… but not always. In my experience, the sad reality is that there are a lot of smart, talented people absolutely busting their backs to produce the entertainment that you hate. I know, because I have worked with them when I work on it myself.

Its a bit counter-intuitive, isn’t it? I think the best analogy may be a tug of war; on the projects that don’t turn out so well, everyone is working as hard as they can but the rope is barely moving at all, because all the effort is at cross purposes and towards different directions. When I was working on that stuff, the love of the job itself and the company of my co-workers kept me going, even though I knew the stuff we were working on was ratty… PLUS, it was the best that I could find at the time…

So next time you watch a complete mess unfold on screen, by all means wonder at the strenuous effort taken to go nowhere, but don’t hate the crew.

This is the lineart for a title-page illustration in my Dad’s book. This particular chapter deals with news stories about Elephants in Science
In a completely unrelated topic, Ted Mathot has assembled a list ofwhat he considers to be the 20 best films of the last 20 years in his Current Flavor blog, which inspired me to try and do the same. It isn’t as easy as it sounds, firstly because so many of my all time favourites are from much earlier, and secondly because I have a hard time sorting out the guilty pleasures and sentimental favourites from what is a truly well made movie… but here is what I came up with (in no particular order):

Being John Malkovitch, the 6th Sense, Crumb, Ed Wood, My Neighbour Totoro, Lantana, Memento, The Unforgiven, Blue Velvet, Old Boy, Bottle Rocket, Fargo, the Fog of War, Heavenly Creatures, Groundhog day, Two Hands, Proof (the Australian one), Hannah and her Sisters, Sexy Beast, Spirited Away.

How about you?

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.

Here’s a VERY preliminary tone-pass of an illustration for the bizarre story of an elephant that trampled a poor fellow and then kept the corpse, carrying it around for days…

In collecting elephant news stories, I’ve noticed that many of them are grim. Mostly for the elephants; stories about poaching, or loss of habitat, etc. But sometimes grim for the humans who live with them…

UPDATE: The colour piece based on this line art can be seen HERE.

Did you know that there is a version of POLO where the steeds are elephants rather than the more traditional horses? There are actually several elephant Polo competitions held around the world, in countries you might associate with elephants, such as Nepal and Thailand. But I bet you didn’t know that the reigning world champion team is from Scotland.

Elephants appear in the news media in reports that fall into a few categories. Such as stories about: elephants under attack by poachers (or loss of ecosystem), rampaging elephants, scientific research involving elephants, elephants in captivity and so on.

In my Dad’s book these stories are arranged by category into their own chapters and each will have its own title page. This sketch is for the chapter dealing with stories about performing elephants.