JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

A rare group shot of the Baker clan taken at my brother Rob’s pre-Christmas party in Sydney.

2004: year in review
Bad Stuff
I found out that some other people are trying to Trademark the name Rocket Rabbit, which necessitates me shelling out the money for some legal battles.

My pal Mike gets in a nasty accident at a game of paint-ball, damages his eye and doesn’t have any insurance.

Highlights
Mike’s friends rally around and hold a fund raiser art auction to raise money for his eye-surgery. It was a great feeling for us to be able to help out.

This was a year for traveling and spending time with my family. Among the great moments spent with a throng of Bakers, was attending a performance of the LION KING on stage in Sydney, courtesy of my brother Rob. For the first time in over 10 years, I spent Christmas in my hometown.

Amongst some other things, some sample illustrations from the book I have been working on have been added to the PrOjeCts section. My Dad (Robert J. Baker)wrote a lot of limericks about elephants a few years ago, and I took on the task of illustrating them. I have so far done about 13 out of a possible total of 20 or so.

Other than working on these, I have still been fiddling around on coloring my old comic-book stuff, as well as figuring out some new material and preparing for a trip home to Australia in March.

I spent the last month in Europe traveling about. The main purpose of the trip was to be at my sister VICTORIA’s wedding in Paris, which all my family members managed to attend. It is no easy matter getting all of us far flung Bakers in the one place at the one time either!

Before and after the Parisian nuptuals I was able to visit friends living in Germany and Sweden. My pals of many years the McClenahans have been living in Munich, where they had just finished work on an animated film. When I showed up they dropped everything and went with me on a trip to Venice. What can I say, I loved that city. But believe it or not I had the worst Italian food I’ve ever had right there. Thereafter I made my way to Florence and back to Munich where I caught the train to Paris.

It was a real blast spending time with my small-town family in that wonderful city. I never stopped getting a kick out of it. Despite the terrible summer, the city looked beautiful in the autumn. After spending some time together we all had to go our seperate ways. The group that came over from Australia went home via Vietnam, which I am jealous about as they had a bunch of adventures there.

Once alone, I went up to Sweden to visit my old pal Annelie who I first met in the Orient when I was travelling there years ago. It was late in the year to be travelling around Sweden but I gave it my best shot, despite the sometimes grey weather. Stockholm is a truly beautiful city, I’m not sure why I haven’t heard more people gush about it… Perhaps the high prices keep them away… I briefly visited the Filmtecknarna Animation studio to pick up a new copy of one of my favourite ever animated shorts; REVOLVER by Lars Ohlson. My previous copy went missing a few years ago…

After Sweden I headed straight down to Germany via a train that drove straight onto a ferry. I spent a bit of time in Stralsund and then on to Berlin, and back to Munich where I flew out of Europe. A few days in New York hanging with my buddy Dave Gordon and the trip was done… whew!