JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

These are some sketches from when I was trying to figure out what Rocket Rabbit looks like. They must be from around 10 years ago. I have some even earlier doodles some place but I can’t lay my hands on them at present. I will post them when they turn up.

When I am doodling away on my self-published comics, I can really disappear up my own creative tail-pipe on the preparations sometimes. I may spend days and days designing a character who only appears in one or two panels, drawing pages and pages of thumbnail sketches, and spending hours and hours thinking up names and back-stories and all that stuff…. none of which shows up in the final book.

Case in point, an airborne adversary for Rocket Rabbit, THRUST MONKEY. He’s a jet-pack powered bad-guy who, by the way, rolls (and flies) with JUMP CHIMP (posted earlier) a rocket-boot sporting fellow flying simian, both of whom are members of the APES OF WRATH, a freelance co-op of hairy marauders, each of whom got way more pencil mileage than was really required.

But on the other hand, playing around with all this stuff is the fun part of doing personal projects. And I get to post the left-overs in my blog.

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.

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.

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.

In 2006 I was pretty consistent in updating this here NEWS page, on average about once a week. But I was very slack in every other section of my website… Until Now!

The galleries in the FOLIO section have been updated to include a few of the many pics posted in this page over the past year. I still have a lot more to add, so check back in a week or so when hopefully it will be more representative of ALL the art I have stored on my FTP.

I just added TWO new galleries in the PHOTO section. Like the first three they are each a random jumble of pictures taken from different places and times and there isn’t any consistent “theme”.

The LINKS section has been updated with some new blogs and couple of websites that belong to some friends of mine. I also added an Emma Peel site that might interest any AVENGERS fans out there. I bought myself an Avengers DVD for Christmas and really enjoyed watching those old shows a great deal.

Work has been busy lately, very busy indeed. Which is a good problem to have in many ways, but I haven’t had much spare time for making comics this year. Even though I thumbnailed out several comics stories at the end of 2005, the combination of animation work and a side project with my Dad has meant that I haven’t had any time to finish off a new comic book in time for this years Comic Con, and the side project wont be printed till later…

Rhode and I just found out that Abismo/Nerve Bomb has landed a great Comic Con booth space this year in an excellent location (BOOTH #1428). Rhode has quite a bit of new material to sell but sadly I don’t have any new books. Once again; not the worst problem to have, especially as many exhibitor friends are unhappy with their booth locations…

To ensure that such a sweet Booth doesn’t go to waste, my NEW stuff this year will be original art, which I have never sold before. I have quite a few doodles which might be sell-able if I take the time to add in the details on the hands and feet which I often lazily leave out of sketches.

I’ll try to crank out some more water colours or coloured pencil pics in the next few weeks. Definately lots of scribbles of my own characters and maybe even some pinups of famous fan favourite characters… I haven’t made up my mind about that yet…

Bold Brian Kalin-O’Connell has recently wrought a powerful picture of Rocket Rabbit dodging disaster; a snarling, super-sized simian! I’ve already had the pleasure of seeing a few people do pin-ups of NAUTI GIRL (which you can see in my COMICS section under the “Pinup gallery” link) but not too many people (apart from my nephews) have had a crack at drawing Rocket. Perhaps Brian will inspire a few more?

To behold the full-size majesty of this super pin-up, get on over to Brian’s Blog and click on the small sized preview he has posted there. And while you are over there, don’t forget to look around and see more of Brian’s artwork.

Yes! Rocket Rabbit is now a REGISTERED Trademark. Which means that he can not only throw a ™ around, but an ® as well. Which looks flashier on “cease and desist” letters.

I had long ago thought it may be a good idea to protect the name of my favourite character, because it is exactly the kind of aliterative moniker someone else could easily hit upon for a cartoon character (or for that matter a vacuum cleaner). But, like a lot of my flashes of insight, that idea was put on the back-burner… Until I found out that somebody else WAS trying to register the “Rocket Rabbit” trademark for themselves a year or two ago.

So, Rocket had to fight what may have been his most dramatic battle ever, with the help of a fill-in sidekick called LEGAL EAGLE (as The Professor was away on vacation). Using my money as freely as ammunition, the two of them prevailed in the end and Rocket prevented someone else from sullying his good name. Then Legal Eagle registered the trademark, so now “Rocket Rabbit” is well and truly protected by an in-penetrable shield of legalese.

I offer this story to anyone out there who has contemplated getting a trademark for one of their characters, but has put it off because of the expense. It is true that it is a little pricey, but I can tell you that it is much cheaper if you don’t have to dispute some else’s claim first. You can file to register a trademark yourself if you want to save some money, but I was glad to have someone to help navigate me though the process.

I have also benefited greatly from my membership in the Bay Area chapter of Lawyers for the Arts. They have chapters all over California, where they hold frequent seminars on Intellectual Property Law and other issues of interest to artists, illustrators and musicians.

Thanks to a tip from Janine Dawson, I found out that Rocket Rabbit was featured in the RADAR TRAP puzzle page section of the Sydney Morning Herald a few weeks ago. My brother Dominic provided me with this scan. The topic for the puzzle was “Obscure Super heroes” and some of the other mighty characters featured in the actual puzzle part were BIONIC MINNOW, and the EMERALD MANTIS… but who better to actually illustrate the theme of super obscurity than everyone’s favourite nuclear powered robot rabbit?

Anyway, that was a pleasant surprise… I contacted the editor to ask how he found out about Rocket and it turns out that he did all his research at the INTERNATIONAL HERO website. Speaking of Rocket Rabbit and his appearances in the press, RR#1 was just reviewed By Randy Lander in his SNAP JUDGEMENTS column on The Fourth Rail:

ROCKET RABBIT #1
by James Baker (Nerve Bomb Comics)

Don and I first reviewed Rocket Rabbit and the Professor in Nerve Bomb about two years ago. At the time, we both found Baker’s work visually appealing but unfocused in terms of story. Rocket Rabbit #1 is a step in the right direction, retaining the impressive art and making much more of a stab at a coherent story, although Baker’s balls-to-the-wall comedy approach still retains a flavor of something overly familiar. However, it’s familiar in a good way, and I certainly found plenty to chuckle at in these pages, as well as enjoying the visual spectacle.

Rocket Rabbit and the Professor are do-gooder heroes with a bizarre mix of creator/creation and boyfriend/girlfriend tension, but they are essentially just engines of destruction and comedy. Whether or not they win is immaterial, and Rocket Rabbit is not a book to look for if you’re seeking answers to the questions of right and wrong or a story that poses any questions deeper than “Wouldn’t it be funny if…?” However, for those who enjoyed the manic humor of Sky Ape or Scurvy Dogs, or the goofy parody of The Tick, Rocket Rabbit might be worth a look.

Where Baker really excels is in his artwork and design sense. I saw the Rocket Rabbit booth at San Diego, and it caught my eye everytime I went by, since it’s such a striking visual, and the pure mayhem of the super brawl at Pow Palace is a visual delight as well. I also really got a kick out of Baker’s amusing villain “The Ass” whose powers and personality change depending on what type of ass he is (smart, dumb, lame, jack, etc.) as well as the Apes of Wrath and the notion of a superhero president who seems to have more than a little in common with flamboyant professional wrestlers. If cheesy puns and mayhem are your kind of humor, Rocket Rabbit is your kind of book.

This review is on the positive side of ambivalent (”GOOD”, with a few caveats) so I give it about a 7 out of 10 on my patented Ego Stroke Meter. This is certainly a marked improvement over the first review they gave me a few years ago, which was on the negative side of ambivalent (”BAD” with a few caveats). I’m sorry guys, but I could only give THAT review a measly 2 out of 10 on the E.S.M.