JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

This Friday, Saturday and Sunday I’ll be sharing a booth with Rhode Montijo at WonderCon. And maybe I’ll even have something new to sell (fingers crossed now). So please come by and see us, either at the show itself or at the After-Party on Saturday evening, which will be held nearby at good ole Maverix Studios.

I started drawing this silly doodle, of HAN SOLO and his co-pilot CHEWBACCA the Wookie, while sitting at my booth at Comic-Con.

It made my pal Rhode laugh so much that I knew I would have to give this drawing to him when I finished it.

Then I put it aside for a while and then forgot about it altogether, until I found it recently, tidied it up a bit and finally gave it to Rhode for his birthday.

My Nephew JACK was 6 years old when he drew this pin-up of Rocket Rabbit, which he gave me while I visited his family in Maryland last year. It beats the hell out of any drawing I did at a similar age, and I can make the comparison because I still have a few of the pictures I drew when I was very little, although the paper they were drawn on is now brown with age.

Sometimes, people who don’t draw ask me “When did you start drawing?” In answer, I usually ask “When did you stop?” because every child draws. I just happen to be one of those who never stopped.

I believe that in MOST cases, the amount of time a child spends drawing, and more importantly enjoying drawing, is the key to artistic ability, rather than innate talent. Whether a child enjoys drawing enough to stay with it is not necessarily tied to their ability, at least in the beginning.

When looking at drawings by a group of 4 and 5 year olds, it is hard to predict which of the kids will become artists in future, and which will become accountants. In fact, the weaker drawings may actually be drawn by the kids who DO become artists later in life.

At around age 8 or 9, the difference in artistic ability becomes more obvious. This is when many children become frustrated at not being able to make their drawings look “real” and abandon drawing. Those who enjoy it, despite the frustration, keep drawing and the extra time spent scribbling makes a difference that you can see.

There are powerful reasons for children to move away from expressing themselves with pictures at that age. Consider that when we learn to read we move from picture books, to picture books with some words, then to novels with spot illustrations, and finally to books that are all text with no pictures at all. Thus, we are culturally conditioned to associate pictures with childhood and immaturity. Children are very concerned with “growing up” and so abandoning drawing can be a self conscious attempt to leave “childish” things behind.

The fact that our education system doesn’t place much importance on visual skills beyond kindergarten is another reason that many children give up drawing. At a similar age, we are being awarded prizes for academic and athletic achievement, so improvement in those areas (and overcoming the frustrations of your limitations) is rewarded. In my experience that was not the case with drawing, where the rewards were all purely personal.

On the other hand, the fact that drawing skill was not rewarded, or even acknowledged by “the system” was a large part of its appeal to me as a child. Making pictures was the only thing that gave me pleasure that wasn’t contingent on the opinions of team members, class mates or teachers. After about the age of 10, none of my other classmates drew, so it wasn’t a question of competing or being compared to anyone else. Drawing was something that I could do on my own, free from the judgements of others.

These days I draw to earn a living, rather than solely to amuse myself, as was the case when I was growing up. Sometimes it is hard to summon up that spirit of pure joy that drawing gave me as a child because my drawings are now tied to budgets and schedules, and bills, and generally bogged down in other mundane things… yes, even including the judgements of others that I was blissfully spared as a kid… But I think that my best work comes on those days when I can somehow find that childish attitude and pour it into a picture.

NO Credit? NO Problem!
Here, at last, is the Abismo/Nerve Bomb San Diego Comic-Con report for 2007.

JIMMY “Easy Terms” BAKERSFIELD and RODDY “Deep Discount” MONTECARLO working the CON.

A COMIC CON trend that some small-press and indie exhibitors complain about is the growing presence of huge media companies using Comic Con as a place to pimp their wares and offer previews of up-coming games, toys, films and books. Their enormous displays with all the bells and whistles, and appearances by Hollywood movie stars are crowd pleasers for sure (judging from the spike in attendance since this trend began) but it makes it hard for the little guy selling home-made books to get any attention.

With these deals, we must be CRAZY!!
In the spirit of “if you can’t beat em, join ‘em”, Rhode and I resolved to go CORPORATE. Salesmanship itself was going to be our marketing “angle” this year.

You can trust Jimmy; he’s a professional.

But what do a pair of self-publisher fly-by-night cartoonists know about MARKETING? Plus, after paying for the Abismo/Nerve Bomb booth space, we didn’t have much money left over in the budget for booth decoration, which makes it hard to compete with all the full-scale Pirate Ships, Giant Robots and sexy Booth-models of other displays. What’s a down at heel indie self-publishing duo to do?…

Thankfully, two expert salesmen came to our rescue and offered to help out in exchange for taking a controlling stake in the burgeoning Abismo/Nerve Bomb business empire.

Ladies, Roddy is here for YOU!

Our new C.F.O. RODDY MONTECARLO and and C.E.O. JIMMY BAKERSFIELD took over the booth display this year, and really came through for us. Who better to work the CON than two bona fide CON-MEN? Thanks to their oversight, the Abismo/Nerve Bomb booth was transformed into RODDY and JIMMY’s Discount Emporium which was, without a doubt, one of the classiest on the showroom floor this year. To match their natty jackets, pumped up sense of style and full-bore salesmanship, Roddy and Jimmy tricked out the booth in snazzy signage and covered it in plaid, even though finding THAT much LOUD fabric was no easy feat.

As seen on TV!
The customers were really pulled in by the crazy mark-down signs, especially the FREE TOASTER deal, though sad to say, nobody spent the $1000 on comics that was required to take it home (as mentioned in the fine-print). That may be just as well, otherwise Roddy wouldn’t have anything to make his breakfast toast with.

The FREE TOASTER SCAM DEAL.Everything must GO!!
The New C.E.O. of Nerve Bomb anticipated higher sales this year but even despite all the NEW product (my Dad’s elephant book, a new mini-comic and some Giclee prints) sales were not much more than in 2006, when there was nothing new to sell. It is tough to figure out the key to sales… it isn’t simply a matter of new product, good booth placement and high attendance, that is for sure… because all those things were on hand this year, and KILLER salesmanship as well.

Act NOW to avoid Disappointment!

Roddy works a sucker customer!Thanks to Roddy and Jimmy’s help with the booth, Rhode and I both had time to do some socialising. One of my favourite things about Comic Con is the chance to meet friends whom I haven’t seen in ages, including a lot of people that I only see at cons. Each evening, there are so many people that I would like to spend time with that it is getting progressively harder and harder each year to organise a get-together when so many people are involved.

Spending an hour or so on Wednesday evening (after Preview Night) wandering from pub to pub with a huge group of hungry people, who were steadily growing HANGRY (hungry and angry) I resolved to thereafter venture out to eat with a group only it had a reservation. A few years ago, it was possible to just luck into some place that had space to seat your huge party of chums but that just isn’t possible these days, at least in the nearby Gaslamp area.

San Diego is our town, Baby!Thursday evening we really hit the jackpot when a stripped down, special-ops task force of hand-picked and hungry folks successfully mounted a raid on a fantastic “all you can eat” Brazillian BBQ place called Rei Do Gado, which was scoped out by our San Diego food recon team of Jeff and Lovelyn (who took us to Hash house Au Go Go last year). Along with them, I spent a very enjoyable evening with Rhode, my good friend John Stevenson and the always hilarious Kirk Thatcher. We got an early reservation and hunkered down together to climb the meat Materhorn pausing between mouthfuls to disturb the surrounding patrons with both the tone and volume of our conversation.

Group Discounts!!
The next night, I had a very enjoyable dinner with another old friend, David Gordon, who now lives in New York. He introduced me to a whole table of his friends from Blue Sky. The service in the restaurant was slow but we weren’t in any hurry and had a very enjoyable time just chatting away about publishing and animation, while our food showed up bit by bit. As we ate, cellphone calls came in from reservation-less and hungry pals who were wandering the wasteland outside, looking for a place to sit and eat on a busy Gaslamp Friday evening, so by the end of the night our table was full of cronies from Pixar, ILM, Maverix and Blue Sky, as more and more friends came our way. Saturday night there was a big group heading off to dine in Old Town but I was very tired and the fact that the group was going a long way with no reservation made me balk (even though I later found out that they all had a fun evening and were seated no problem) and instead I went to dinner close by the convention center with Benton, Anson, Deanna, Bosco, Steve, Steward and his family and an old crony from my Colossal Pictures days, Antonio Toro.

Luscious French Toast.When you spend all day surrounded by nerds in spandex, it is good to have a hearty breakfast, which I did most days, starting with Rhode and Sam Hiti at the hotel we all shared a room at. Saturday, I had breakfast with John, Kirk and Dave at a Hawaiian themed diner by the harbour. The morning of the last day of the show started well with a HUGE Buffet Breakfast with Vincent Stall, and my hotel roomies Sam and Rhode.

Sunday evening wrapped the show with the traditional BBQ at the home of Derek Thompson’s ever gracious parents Barbara and Larry. This is the nicest end to the con for me. A large group of weary but happy attendees and exhibitors got together to wind down over gourmet hotdogs and drinks. Monday morning we slept in a little and had a breakfast at the SUN CAFE before we all made our separate ways home.

I managed to fit in a lot of socialising this year but I still missed out on eating with a lot of friends. That is what NEXT YEAR is for.

New Inventory!

No No No! Buy LOW sell HIGH!My SWAG for this year includes a book I have been seeking for some time, namely TIFFANY, written by Yann (prior collaborator with the great Denis Bodart) with artwork by Herval, an artist I first became familiar with through the Drawing Board. Herval has a clean style with great figure drawing and warm, clean colour palettes. The book is in French and although my ability to speak that language is close to zero, I can read it a little and I am battling my way through the book with a dictionary at the moment. The story is a whodunnit, concerning an elegant young woman, descended from the same family as Joan Of Arc, who takes over her brother’s detective agency after he is killed, to investigate his murder.

MONSTER ALLERGY by Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa, the husband and wife team that did Sky Doll. This time their artwork is an appealing fusion of both European and Japanese cartoony comics drawing styles.

GYPSY COLLECTED is an omnibus edition of 3 graphic albums, written by Thierry Smolderin and illustrated by a Swiss artist whom I admire very much; Enrico Marini. I first became aware of him when he drew in a very Manga-influenced style on a series called “Olivier Varèse” (also written by Smolderin) which was collected in an English edition called Negative Exposure. More recently, he illustrated a series called RAPTORS which was drawn in a different style. Gypsy shows his artwork in a transition between those two styles.

MASSIVE SWERVE by Robert Valley. I have bought about 4 variations on this book so far… hopefully Robert will actually put out a NEW Massive Swerve (rather than reprints and colour variations) sometime soon.

POPPING THROUGH PICTURES by Amanda Visell is a charming modern picture book in the tradition of little golden books; thick card stock pages and vivid painted, fun and cartoony illustrations. She also makes fantastic little toys which she sold at the con, and more of them can be seen in her Blog.

BUBBLES SKETCHBOOK by Luca Tieri was one of my favourite scores this year. This guy draws cartoons that leap from the page (or screen) with a crazy Pop-Rock energy. I’ve been a big fan of his energetic line and electric colour choices since I somehow stumbled onto his website a few years ago, so it is wonderful to finally own his book. Luca came all the way from Italy to attend the con and I had the pleasure of meeting him in person when he came by my booth with Rajesh from the Department of Art and Power.

Comic-Con exhausts even the super-salesmenI came by some great little books by way of swaps, including Marty Ito’s PAINTMONSTER book and
Doug Holgate’s SPAGHETTI WESTERN/CHECKMATE WORDSWORTH Mini, both of whom had come a very long way to be at the con (from Japan and Australia, respectively). In exchange for some hits of our OLD SPICE, Marc Nordstrom from B-Minus Comiks swapped me an anthology of their previous hilarious stuff plus a NEW issue of GO GO CHANGEBOTS, which is their very funny Transformers parody.

There were a few things that I wanted to buy but didn’t get, and I hope to pick up later. These include Chris Sanders’ new colour sketchbook, and Bill Presing’s beautiful BELLE DU JOUR book.

Close-out Sale!
2007 was the 10th year that I attended Comic Con, the 7th time as an exhibitor and the 4th time sharing an exhibitor-booth with good pal mr Rhode Montijo. In the time that I have been attending, Comic Con has not only grown in size but the focus and tone has changed as well. 10 years ago it was already huge but my memory of that time is that it was mostly about comics and the people you saw about the place, both exhibiting and attending, were overwhelmingly nerdy, pear-shaped or skinny, men.

Master huckster JIMMY “Easy Terms” BAKERSFIELD, Pimping some pachyderms!

In those days, the few women in attendance were most likely models paid by booths to be in costume. A few years later the numbers of women fans started to climb when we began to see tubby ladies dressed in Sailor Moon outfits. Now the Con is attended by a broad range of men women and children, and a lot of the fans walking around wearing HERO outfits are actually good looking… but thankfully there are still plenty of pear-shaped anime characters, fat Spidermen and skinny Hulks about the place because that is what Comic Con really is about, for me. On the subject of costumes I didn’t attend the masquerade this year so my costume watching was limited to what walked past my booth. This year there were a lot of buff-dudes strutting around in capes and speedos brandishing cardboard shields. Most of them were “spartans” methinks, but some had a Viking vibe.

Selling the hotel to a gullible tourist puts the operation in the red!

Red-Light Special
Highlights of this year’s con (apart from those mentioned already) were:

• Steve and Bosco’s reaction to the booth (which made it all worthwhile)
• getting a smile from Rosario Awesome.
• Steve Purcell winning an Eisner!

Product Recall
The only bummer this year was the Faulty air-conditioner in our hotel that blew piping hot toilet smell into our room.

No interest ’till 2008!

See you next year!I came away from this year’s show very inspired to do some new stuff for next year. The quality of self published books has really soared from the Black and White sketchbooks done at Kinkos a few years ago, to square bound books, and then to the hardbound full colour books that we see now. The affordability of quality small-run printing means that it is a great time to be a self-publisher but on the other hand it means that you really have to raise your game if you want to stand out these days. The number of indy artists producing their own beautiful figurines and toys is also very inspiring… it gives me a lot to think about!

See you all NEXT YEAR!

(thanks to Rhode Montijo, Jeff Hansen, Sam Hiti, Jav Hernandez and Bosco Ng for the great photographs!)

I am writing up my lengthy Comic Con report at the moment, but I am waiting on some photos that I want to add to the report before I post it.

Plus, I actually need to fill out my much-delayed tax return this week, and for a guy who is as feeble with numbers as I am, that takes up more brain power and time than it should…

In the meantime, here is a sketch I did for Irma Navarro, while I sat at the Abismo/Nerve Bomb Comic Con booth.

I am posting from my hotel here in sunny San Diego.

We got down here a day early, on Tuesday, to set up our booth with a minimum of fuss. Last Night was PREVIEW NIGHT here at Comic Con and it went very well for us.

In addition to all the left overs from previous years, I have the NEW mini-comic, entitled JOCK, the prints made on my tasty new EPSON printer and my Dad’s ELEPHANT book to sell.

I wont likely post again until COMIC CON 2007 is done and I can give a full report of all the craziness.

Talk to you all next week!

This is a sketch of Rocket Rabbit’s partner, THE PROFESSOR, that I drew at LAST year’s Comic Con while minding the Abismo/Nerve Bomb booth. For those of you who don’t like the feet to be cut off on sketches, I say that she is probably wading through some knee-deep water… yeah, that’s it.

My preparations for this year’s Comic Con are nearing the finish line. The week before Comic Con is always hectic for me and this year is no different. No matter how hard I try to get a head-start on this stuff, it always seems to pile up on me at the last minute!

My fancy new printer showed up yesterday and now I have to figure out how to use it along with the extra Ink-System that I bought to go with it… all while puting finishing touches on the 36 page MINI. Everything needs to be done before a week from today because that is when Rhode and I drive down to San Diego.

For making the CON itself a little more manageable, I just found a very helpful link; an online BOOTH LOCATOR which displays a map of the Comic Con layout with mouse-over links that reveal the exhibitors at each booth. There is also a handy-dandy search field.

In contrast to the image in the previous post, the photo textures in this illustration were applied in Photoshop, and it took almost as long, if not longer, to do it with all the latest software. The sky and ground use textures taken from photos and the elephant uses a photo of actual elephant skin. Can anyone guess the source texture for the boom of the CRANE in this image? This image is from the elephant book and illustrates the story of a Zoo elephant that fell in a ditch and the efforts to get him back out.

My own efforts, for the next two weeks, will be focussed on last minute preparations for COMIC CON. I have about 100 copies of the elepant book left and they will all be on sale in San Diego. I will be making some prints of the illustrations from the Elephant Book just as soon as my tasty new Epson 1800 printer shows up. In the meantime, I am preparing the art and finishing off the mini comic. Apart from elephant stuff, I will be selling the new Mini comic and all the left-overs from previous years; sketchbooks, comics and so forth.

This picture was done before I had ever used Photoshop, so the textures were cut out of magazines and glued over a pencil drawing. The line-art is on the paper and on a celluloid overlay. The idea of combining photo-textures with hand drawn animation appealed to me but I could never get anybody else to go for it, despite pitching it on several different projects. This image was a style-proposal for a “healthy dog food” commercial.

Speaking of dogs, I am now working on a MINI COMIC about the dog I got when I was 7 years old. The basis for the tale is a story I had written down a few months ago but didn’t post here because it was too long for a blog post… but just the right length for a MINI-comic.

A mini seemed to be a good excuse to do things differently. So far, I have done the whole thing digitally, all drawn on my 15 inch Cintiq. This has allowed me to play around with ALL the elements - text line and tone - at a much earlier stage of the process than I am used to and I’m enjoying that flexibility. This the first time that I have made a comic this way and it was inspired by watching Ted Mathot working digitally on his Rose and Isabel epic.

The mini will be in landscape format and about half the size of the comics I normally do, at 4.25 X 6.5 inches. Because of the “wide-screen” dimensions, the fact that there is only one panel per page, and proportionally more text, the mini is looking more like a tiny children’s picture book than a standard comic book.

Apart from trying to get away from the clutter of my typical page layouts (which are really jammed with panels) my goal is to draw this one looser than the comics I have made before, but hopefully still have some appealing “drawing” in there. I had in mind the typical level of finish of the storyboards I do professionally, which can be rather scribbly at times.

Depending on how fast I draw, the mini will be either 32 or 36 pages and will be printed at KINKOs or some other copy shop. I will probably make about 100 or so to sell at COMIC-CON.