JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

After a long hiatus, there has been an update in the ARTWORK section of the site. Frequent readers of this here blog may have seen most of the 72 new images already, as I mostly post my artwork here first. There are even more pics uploaded onto the site that haven’t yet been integrated into the artwork galleries, but if you visit the FOLIO section and click ALL GALLERIES you can see everything that I have organised so far.

With great relief, I delivered yesterday some artwork on a job that I have been working on off-and-on for quite a while. One of the aspects of working at home is the lack of structure and, for me, that sometimes can be a drawback in that it results in a lack of focus… There are those days where a good drawing doesn’t seem to flow out of the pencil…

On days such as those, while working at a 9-to-5 job in a company, surrounded by producers brandishing schedules, I’m obliged to stick at it until a good drawing does appear or submit whatever comes out of the pencil, no matter what it looks like.

But when working at home, it is tempting to walk away from the desk and wait until the muse magically appears… That tendency was compounded by the fact that this particular job had no firm deadline, which allowed me to procrastinate, spin my wheels and meander to my heart’s content.

Until last week anyway, when the hammer finally came down and I was told to wrap it up this week, which required a desperate push to tidy up all the scribbles I had been doing over the past few weeks and arrange them into some kind of a presentable package…

Maybe I need to work in a shared studio again… I am getting a little weary of working at home and stewing in my own juices

Here’s the last batch of scribbles from my cheesecake job, showing quite a few variations on similar poses. I’ll post the final character when I have inked her.

Here is another page of sketches from my super-fun cheesecake logo-character design job.

OK, that’s enough fun for one day, I have to get back to all the OTHER stuff I have to do…

I was lazy in drawing the hands and feet on these (my bad habit). I’ll tidy them up later.

Right now, I have a few little design jobs all cooking on the stove at the same time. Some of them are tasty, some of them not so tasty. Here are some sketches for one of the fun jobs. The assignment is to design a cheesecake pinup-girl to be the icon character for a potential line of Boudoir clothing and accessories (which is why she is holding a handbag in a few of the sketches). This is the first time that I have designed a female character and had the client ask me to make the boobs and bum even bigger. Good times.

I’ll post some more cheesecake sketches later, once I scan them. My good scanner (a 2nd-hand Epson Perfection 3170) just up and died recently; one day it simply failed to even turn on, after being a great workhorse for about a year… So until I buy a new scanner (model suggestions anyone?) I am stuck with my slow All-In-One (fax/printer/scanner) which has lousy picture quality, though serviceable enough for rough Black and White sketches…

These are some of the illustrations for an English Language text book for Japanese readers. I drew them many years ago while I was working and living in Japan.

In the early months, my income was mainly from Teaching English, so freelance illustration jobs were a welcome distraction from my limitations as an English Language teacher…. I didn’t teach at a school (if you can call what I was doing “teaching” at all) instead, I put on a tie and an ill-fitting suit (bought from a shady tailor in Bangkok) and went to teach on-site at several businesses around Tokyo (including National Electronics and Toshiba) that had conversational English classes as part of the training program for their employees. I spent a lot of time travelling around Tokyo by train, going from job to job. Using Google Earth and WikiMapia I was recently able to figure out where some of my old teaching posts were.

This was part of a long period in my life where I rarely participated in a fluent conversation. In the evenings, my students mangled my own language (under my earnest direction) and the for the rest of the day I mangled theirs, as I tried to learn Japanese. Though I was a language-teacher at night, in the mornings I was a language-student myself, attending Japanese language classes. I am sad to say that I never got very fluent, despite my very best efforts (a Japanese friend tells me that I speak Japanese like a little girl) but I managed to pick up enough “survival” Japanese to get around, order food and have limited conversations with anyone patient enough to listen to me shred the verb conjugations of their language.

Thankfully, both for me and the well-being of my English-language students, I soon found a job that I was better qualified for; working in animation (at TOEI Studios, on a Superman TV series) and so I quit being an English teacher. Though the full-time job meant that I unfortunately had to give up my morning Japanese classes, it was a relief to be able to take off the baggy suit and neck-tie and draw all day. I continued to do freelance illustration jobs, in addition to the animation work, right up until I left Japan.

When I worked at Colossal Pictures we showed animated series ideas to TV networks every year. One of my pitches was about a magician called KOALA LUMPUR, who I saw as a tiny, mystical problem solver; a cross between Yoda and Mandrake the magician. His action-hero side kick, named Dr DINGO, was a flea-bitten Indiana Jones in a Goodwill pith helmet.

I felt that a duo comprised of a magic detective koala bear and an adventurer/scientist canine could go anywhere and do anything. Between the two of them there would be so many possibilities for funny episodes. Sluething out whodunnits, exploring watchamacallits and fighting a nutty assortment of baddies with an array of dopey invention-thingamajigs. I drew up some pitch-art and wrote out a list of episode ideas and then took the whole lot down to LA and hopped about the room as I explained it all to some network executives. But, as is the case with many a “good meeting” in LA, it ultimately didn’t go anywhere…

Then, few years later, someone in the Colossal Pictures interactive unit found the old pitch materials and thought that this goofy investigative team would be a good basis for a computer game. I knew nothing about computer games back then, or computers either if it comes to that, but I got involved in making a Koala Lumpur game because I thought that it might help get a TV show for the idea (networks are sometimes more interested in ideas that have already been brought to market in some form or other). So we pitched a game called KOALA LUMPUR: MYSTIC MARSUPIAL to a big game company who, lo and behold, actually gave the project a green-light.

After years of working on, and even occasionally directing, all sorts of projects that were dreamed up by other people, it was exciting to finally be directing an idea of my own. I was very pleased that a couple of my best friends were doing the voices for the main characters; Phil Robinson as KOALA and John Stevenson as Dr. DINGO. I had them in mind from the start and their voices were used to pitch the idea in rough assemblies of the game, yet the powers that be intended to replace them with professional actors in the final product… but came around to my way of thinking when they couldn’t find any voices that were better. John and Phil did a fantastic job of bringing each character to life. Koala had a jumbly accent that was part Hindi and part Australian and Dingo sounded like a blustery British colonel.

The timing of the production was unfortunate for two reasons. Firstly, while our game was being made the industry shifted quickly to 3D games, like DOOM, and by the time our 2D game came out it was already yesterday’s news. The second bit of bad luck was that Colossal Pictures filed for bankruptcy in the midst of production. This caused financial and legal rifts between the companies involved and the completion of production was stressful beyond belief. The end-product suffered as a result. It certainly didn’t come out as I had intended it. Anyway, despite all the hardship, the game came out on schedule, retitled “KOALA LUMPUR: JOURNEY TO THE EDGE” by some marketing genius, to mixed reviews and moderate sales in the USA. It sold better in Europe, Germany in particular, for some reason.

Not long after the KOALA LUMPUR game was released, Colossal Pictures finally went bust completely, and after 20 years of business, that great studio closed its doors for good. Suffice it to say that I look back on the project with a mixture of feelings these days. I learned a lot but many of the lessons were cautionary rather than inspirational. I came to realise that I just don’t have the stomach (or the brains, balls or spinal chord) for directing big projects, and it just wasn’t as much fun as I thought it was going to be…

On the other hand, I still smile when I think about the KOALA LUMPUR SHOW I saw in my mind in the first place, directing THAT could be fun… so maybe I haven’t given up on the idea completely….

Last weekend I put on my moth-eaten old suit and walked the few blocks from my apartment to the San Francisco Masonic Hall, to watch a screening of Ratatouille, the latest PIXAR film. Later, at the Wrap-party, I was surrounded by co-workers and friends, all dressed-up, wearing huge grins on their faces. It wasn’t only the champagne making them smile; they realized that they had somehow made yet another great movie.

I am curious to see how Ratatouille goes over with general audiences. If they like it as much as the Wrap-party audience then it might be the biggest hit of any Pixar film yet. Kids will no doubt enjoy the fun scenes of a rat-chef as much as I did, but will they appreciate the thematic sophistication? Will clean-freaks get beyond the “ICK-factor” and learn to love a little rodent (yes, even in the kitchen) as much as me? How will it play for the People of France and other Francophone people? Will they see the love-letter to French culture that I see, among the many layers of this film?

There were quite a few French artists on the crew. No self-respecting animation studio can compete without its fair share of French artists these days (they are as sought after in the corporate animation-race as German rocket-scientists were in the space-race) and I think that their participation in this particular project lends it an authenticity, right down to the distinctive Gallic gestures in the beautifully acted animation.

Paris is lovingly presented, in one beauty-shot after another. The scenes of the city seen through evening fog from the River Seine brought back memories of my own nocturnal wanderings along those banks. This is the new movie to beat in terms of animation design. Character-design, production-design, staging, shading, lighting… everything.

As someone who worked on it myself, I am not able to give an unbiased review of this film, so I shouldn’t even try. Let’s just say that if you are a fan of any of the other 7 Pixar films, then you are not going to be disappointed by number #8.

These days, many artists (even those still in school) have their own web-sites, with links to artists who have influenced them. Hop-scotching around the internet from site to site has been a great source of inspiration for me in recent years. You can see links to artists that I admire on my LINKS page, but some of those who have influenced me the most have been those that I have worked with personally, and in many cases they don’t have websites and are therefore unknown by people who have not worked with them too.

Part One: Early Influences
I didn’t attend art school. When I started working in animation, at the age of 17, I was trained on the job and there wasn’t time for much “proper” training in the midst of production. So, while a lot of people remember the early influence of their art teachers, I am grateful to those few artist/co-workers who took time to show me some tricks and give encouragement when I was starting out, and had even less idea of what I was doing than I do today. Here are a few of the cartoonists who influenced me early in my career.

JON McCLENAHAN is an American, but he entered the animation industry in Australia, which is where I met him, when I started out at Hanna-Barbera’s Sydney studio, as an inbetweener. Jon was already an animator and he was the first artist ever to take an interest in me and I owe him a lot for that. He gave me encouragement and help with some animation I was doing in my spare time, because I was getting frustrated with being an inbetweener. Partly due to that after hours experimentation, and Jon’s encouragement, I did eventually get a chance to animate. Jon was, and still is, a very focussed, hard worker and he got a lot of work done by staying in his chair all day and drawing, rather than yakking with co-workers, which was my habit back then. I have since acquired his ability to work hard, day after day, but sadly I have never been able to apply Jon’s straightforward approach to creativity; he doesn’t second guess himself, and forges ahead with his first idea. I admire that approach very much and tried to adopt it for myself, but sadly I am rarely happy with my first idea, and so my method is is to “noodle” and try alternatives and throw away a lot of work along the path to making something I am proud of. Years later, after Jon and his family had moved back to his home town of Chicago, I had a chance to work with him at his own studio, called STARTOONS. Fans of Animaniacs, Tiny Toons, Tazmania and other quality TV cartoons from the 1980s and early 1990s may have heard of that studio because many of the funniest (and Emmy winning-est) episodes of those popular shows were animated by Jon and his crew.

Jon and I haven’t worked together for many years but we are great friends to this day.

Simon and Chris. These guys are often mentioned in the same breath by people who know them, because they are such complementary friends. When I first started working, they were like the big brothers I never had as a kid. In addition to picking up a cynical sense of humour that I hadn’t really earned yet, I learned a great deal about animation and cartooning from watching these two blokes:

CHRIS HAUGE has animated on the influential Gorillaz videos, including that first one for “Clint Eastwood” that blew everyone away (I must have watched it about 100 times). He did those when working in London for Passion Pictures. Before being part of that buzz, years and years earlier, Chris turned on a light bulb over my noggin when he was the first animator who explained to me that animation wasn’t just individual drawings or even pretty drawings… it is the relationship between those drawings that is important; he made me think about TIMING, which is something that he excells at himself. Chris showed me how to plan out the action in thumbnails first so as not to jam too much “stuff” into a scene, and ensure that the drawings each had enough screen time to “read” for the audience. That may seem obvious, especially to those of you who have had formal training, but it was a revelation to me when I was 18. (He later tried to teach me to surf, with much less success. My thrashing and splashing around made him look “uncool” in front of his surfer peers). As well as enjoying working with Chris at Hanna Barbera in Sydney, I also learned a lot from him when we both worked on commercials at Colossal Pictures in San Francisco (my favourite company I ever worked at). Chris now has his own animation studio in Sydney called HALO PICTURES with not only a great showreel but also a great location; near the beach. (Being close to the surf was one of the major factors in choosing a studio location for Chris).

Chris is the only of my art-pals on this list who actually does have a website, so please check out his animation for GORILLAZ and various other bits and pieces of coolness.

SIMON O’LEARY has worked on projects such as Disney’s Tarzan (in the Paris unit) and now directs commercials in Sydney. His cartooning ability, dry sense of humour and unpretentious approach to working were all major inspirations to me when I started in the animation industry and he inspires me to this very day. He is one of those guys who can do FUNNY drawings… drawings that’ll make you blow your coffee out your nose; you are laughing so hard. This is especially so when he busts out a savagely accurate caricature of a co-worker (or YOU) or a funny doodle based on something that happened at lunch hour. For 25 years or so Simon has both written and drawn a comic strip called Fred Gassit which runs in the Australian Motor Cycle News magazine (and several other motorcycle magazines around the world). While the strip is ostensibly related to the world of motorcycling, the humour is really about Simon taking pot-shots at the world in general, via the persona of Fred; a sarcastic dog-like character who is a cantankerous bastard but appealing none the less (much like Simon). Both the humour and the artwork are vulgar yet sophisticated (much like Simon), which is a winning combination for me; the hardest laughs happen when neurones within the low-brow and the high-brow are firing simultaneously. I have a collection of these strips that is a treasured possession I look through when I want a laugh or need to swipe ideas on how to draw a vehicle, a goon, a bikini babe, or anything for that matter. To my mind these cartoons are insanely funny and I wish that Simon was rich and famous as a result, but the fact is that he doesn’t even sign them let alone “promote” them. Self-promotion is not what Simon is about. Which explains why he doesn’t have a website and why you probably haven’t heard of him.

I have worked with Simon in Sydney, Paris and San Francisco and I look forward to working with him again some day.

DEANE TAYLOR may best be known as the Art Director on the Nightmare before Christmas (and a spin-off game). He also did design work on the animated shows Cow and Chicken and I.M. Weasel by Dave Feiss (yet another animation hero of mine, from later in my career). But years before that, Deane ran the layout department at Hanna Barbera in Sydney. After I had been animating for a few years, Deane offered me a chance at learning layouts under his supervision. Consequently, most of what I know today about composition I learned from Deane, or picked up by working with him and watching him go. He was the most prolific artist in the department. He has a very dynamic drawing style, featuring a clever use of shape and silhoette, that many of his trainees tried to copy, but nobody ever matched Deane for graphic dynamism and energy of line. He taught me some simple compositional guidelines that I learned to apply over and over again, but apart from art tricks, he also showed me quite a bit about work ethics and attitude. Even though the shows we worked on were pretty crappy in those days, and many people just went through the motions when making them, Deane was one of the few who tried his hardest on every show, no matter what. He took pride in his work. He respected people who did a good job on whatever they were given to do, rather than those people who will work on only 2 cylinders, saving themselves for the big deal job on the distant horizon.

Deane taught me to always think of how to “plus” the material that came across my desk. That is certainly what he always does.

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I am very lucky in that I have worked all over the globe, at some really great studios, on some quality productions, with loads of amazing artists over the years… but these guys listed here had a huge influence on me, disproportionate to the quality of the projects we worked on together. In many cases the stuff we collaborated on was a lot of crap, yet these artists are still some of those that I respect the most.