Nintendo Poster for the Nintendo DSi LA Launch

I'm super proud to announce that I'm one of the three Iam8bit artists selected to "perform" at the Nintendo DS1 Launch Event. It's this Saturday (April 4th) at Universal City Walk 9PM to 1AM.

To celebrate the newest Nintendo System, a lucky few (maybe even you) will receive a free poster...


...and to make it extra cool, I won't be just signing them, I'll actually drawing you people into the poster! So, make sure you wear your best outfit to be immortalized!

Here's the exclusive shirt and stickers as well that will only be available Saturday!


I feel super honored to be a part of this, and hope all of you can come and have fun! Hope to see ya there!

Post-its for 2009 Pictoplasma Character Walk

Here's some post-its I did for the 2009 Pictoplasma Character Walk in Berlin. It's part of the ich bin 8-bit curated by Love Ablan, Jon M. Gibson, and Derek Puleston.

I picked the theme "still happy to be alive"



I'm joined by my bestest friends Jorge R. Gutierrez , Sandra Equihua and Tony Mora.

We are all a part of this installation by Jude Buffum:


So if you're in Berlin, take some pictures! I'd love to see them!

Neurotitan Gallery
Rosenthaler Str. 39, 10178
Mar 17-Apr 11, Mon-Sat 12-20h, Sun 14-19h
Vernissage: Tuesday, Mar 17, 12h

www.iam8bit.com

www.neurotitan.de

I Am 8 Bit Everywhere!

There is so much press for the I am 8-Bit show this year! Check out some!

The always amazing Old Man Musings
The cool coverage on Game One


Game Jew is always bare chested


A funny account of the night on Elizabeth Ito's blog
Vinyl Pulse has some pics plus a video
The show is still up! You can see it the real pieces in person at Gallery 1988!

Wario Needs Love Too

Here's my latest for the I Am 8-Bit Show.

With this piece, and all my new stuff, I've been really inspired by chaildren book illustrators from the 70s.

It's called "Wario Needs Love Too"

Acrylic and Ink on Illustration Board

I've been trying to begun to really stray from the digital rough...

Marios 4-9

Here's the results of a very busy weekend:

SMB2


Wrecking Crew


SMB1


SML1


NSMB


SMB1

These are all of them. If I have more time, I'm going to try to get 3 more large pieces done too...

You guys wanna see some Tigre stuff?

Marios: 1-3

Here's the very first of the new paintings for the upcoming I Am 8 Bit show.

I am doing a total of 9 Marios all together all based on his various pallettes in the games.

I am also trying a new approach to the paintings, What do you think? Old pantings more or the newer "poppier" style?

DK1

SMB1

SMB3

The End of an Era?

Well, this marks the last of my pieces for the I Am 8-Bit artshow which starts next week...

I'm kind of sad because I loved painting for this show a lot. I really really like video games and I wish that's all I could do all day long, but I do need that day job.

For my last hoo-rah I did one of the greatest video game characters of all time-MEGA MAN (aka Rockman in Japan).

I really am a HUGE Mega Man fan and it was really hard to get a design I was happy with. I really like the original design a lot, even if it is HEAVILY influenced by Osamu Tekzuka's Astroboy...

That's another discussion all together. But here's my first attempts:

As you can see, BORING! Too much like poo for me.

Then I saw the new official Capcom redesign.

It looks kinda cool right? Naw, I have strong feelings about this one! I thought this was an American redesign because of some of the choices made. One thing that really bugs me about American rip-offs of Anime/Manga is our lack of what makes it design appealing in the first place. The original sprite is so great, it's already SD (super deformed), and squat, but not a caricature of a normal guy.

It has its own design, then to ignore a lot of those proportional choices and just shrink the body seemed kind of lazy to me.

When I found out it was directly from Capcom Japan, I was shocked!

Don't get me wrong, the new game is really cool, the animation is amazing and I think they did a lot of cool things to the original game mechanics and level design, but that design...

So, here's mine. I tried to keep his proportions squat, his chest broad. I tried to keep him "cool" looking with expressions and color choices:

What do you think? Do you like the new Capcom design, or thoughts on the new game? You think I'm crazy with these opinions of the redesign? Do you think I should do a series of Mega Man bosses?

Legend of Zelda

Well, here's my second series of paintings (three all together) I'm doing for this year's I Am 8-bit Show.

I picked Ledend of Zelda because this is actually the second game I ever got for the NES. Oh the harsh Pennsylvania winter of 1986 was warmed by searching a new world filled with little weird creatures lurking about bushes and tombstones.

The game was amazing, but another really cool thing were the illustrations from the manual. They looked like a Disney cartoon I have never seen! There was this little blond-haired kid )who looked like me) killing bats and searching though dungeons.



I wanted to try something new for this piece so I tried lots of rendering techniques and color comps:


I finally settled on this one:


The final "Antique Link" is (5.5. X 9") acrylic on spruce:


I was only going to do one painting but I really liked how Link turned out so I decided to do 4 small (5x5") paintings on partical board post ends. I drew the ideas on little post-its:



I scanned them in and tightened them up:


Here's the final paintings:


Would you buy paintings like these for 50 bucks?

Newest Marios

Here's some new Mario paintings I did for this year's I Am 8-Bit show. When thinking about the new pieces, I wanted to try to do ideas I didn't have a chance to touch on the first time around.

Here's a little known fact that Mario had a submarine from Mario Land for the Gameboy:


I always try to incorporate the frame into the color choices and sometimes the actual design. I'll have to track down a picture of the framed piece.

(This really isn't the best scan of this piece, sorry!)



Mario 3 Power ups---I know, I'm missing Kuribo's Shoe, but I'm saving that one...

This was actually my first painting entirely digital to paint, no physical rough...



Next post, Legend of Zelda paintings!