EPIC
It was 2012, and I just moved back to Illinois from California. I grabbed a job to pay me the first week I landed and needed something to pass the time and keep me creatively busy. Luckily, I had a huge inspirational windfall while I flew. I was going to come up with a gallery, or at the very least a book that paid homage to Nintendo Power covers. Those timeless covers of video game scenarios was always one of the main reasons to get Nintendo Power, other than the codes, comics and reviews. Ya know, as a sidebar it may be the reason why I collected Playboy magazines, the cover (no lie). Regardless the case, I wanted to make grand scenes from video games and photograph them; the first one was a no-brainer. My wife and I had recently (back in 2012) played Epic Mickey, a Disney video game exclusively for the Nintendo WIi. The game spans an area much like
Disneyland with certain attractions and characters acting as either prominent characters, or video game bosses. In the scene I was trying to recreate the first "boss" to the game was a demented version of the attraction "it's a small world". You are given paint and thinner to use throughout the game the paint creates, the thinner destroys, where you use these and how you handle the bosses depends on the ending you get, so there is a level of decision making throughout the game's progression and sub-missions. Being so moved by the artistic choices Warren Spector, the games creator, made and the overall first installment's setting I was moved to recreate the first boss encounter, and from there
start a video game based art project. After about a year and a half's attention on and off on my own dime, I took to the camera. Finally after a little Photoshop wizardry it was ready. The fruits of my labor, my first "big" project, was complete. Now it 2017 I needed to get this out there on the market and in the public eye, because I moving forward and all my past un published project need to be out there in the open in order to move on. So here it is, available for viewing, purchase, and criticism. Looking back, and with more time dedicated to it, I could have done even more than what was shown, but I had to move on to the next photography project without dwelling too much, which will be my new lease on this art for the new year. As a final word please enjoy this music montage I put together of footage constructing, planning and shooting this EPIC project.
