The Samus Project

2007-12-12T00:12:00.000-07:00

This is my childhood.

For better or for worse, many of my fondest memories as a child are of playing video games. Holding a controller and navigating the adventures of pixelated characters on my television evoked a sense of wonder within me that was almost unmatched. I am sure many of you can relate. It was an innocent time and it was wonderful.

A few months ago I started working on an art project that would try to capture that time in my life. The Nintendo Entertainment System game Metroid would be the catalyst.

I love Metroid. The vast, bleak, non-linear exploration still awes me, and the bounty hunter on an alien planet premise was unmatched by anything in the library of the NES - except possibly The Legend of Zelda games. Link, however, is not as cool looking as a girl in a space suit with a beam-firing arm cannon.

So, Samus Aran, the protagonist in Metroid, became my subject. The sprite representation of her that inspired the art comes from the Famicom Disk System version of the game. If you are not aware, The Disk System was an external add on to the Famicom (the original, Japanese version of the NES) which offered larger games (for the time), enhanced sound, and the ability to save game data directly to the disk. This Samus sprite was originally in front of each of the three save-game files. It was dropped out of the NES version because the Disk System was not released in the U. S. and Nintendo of America decided to use a password system instead of the other alternative, expensive battery back-up of data. It is a bit of a shame, because I feel that this sprite captures the essence of Samus better than any other found in the game. Though, on the other hand, seeing it for the first time a few years ago was some kind of revelation.

The medium I wanted to use from the beginning was acrylic on wood panel with collage elements. I chose Acrylic because it dries faster than oil and is simply easier to work with. Wood offers me the ability to achieve sharp, rigid edges, which are impossible to get with canvas and which are a work such as this requires. It also provides a smoother surface than canvas. The wood I'm using for the panel is baltic birch, of a quality suitable for fine woodworking, with a frame of radiata pine, which is a hard, defect-free, appearance-grade wood. The collage elements are coated and painted paper which are precisely cut out in perfect squares and then assembled. This was the only way to achieve the hard edges and sharp lines I needed. All of the materials used are the of the highest quality available, archival, and will last for generations. Everything is cut, glued, primed, painted, assembled and finished by hand.

The colors I chose to represent Samus are black, white, and red. The combination is powerful and it helps to emphasize line and shape. I'm also highly influenced by Mondrian.

The size of each painting is 27 inches long by 28 inches tall by 1 inch wide.

I've have seen other people attempt things like this - representations of pixelated video game characters - but not necessarily from a fine art background. I also don't believe that anyone has obtained a precision of line suitable enough to render a pixelated figure accurately. I'm really excited by the possibilities that this opens up.

I plan on making 256 editions of each set of three paintings, which works out to 768 paintings in total. This will take appoximately one year, working full time.

Now, here is where you come in: I need your help. I have not set a price yet. I would like to sell these three as a set - a triptic - at price that is reasonable and fair, but I do not know what that is, because I do not know what is reasonable and fair to you. What is this worth to you? At what price would you say that you could not resist, whereas at a higher price you would? I would like you to let me know by emailing me, regardless of that amount, but only if you would consider the possibility of these three hanging on your wall. I will then use rudimentary statistical analysis on the data provided to determine the best possible price, whatever that may be, and start selling these at that price.

To view more pictures, visit my Flickr page here.

(Note: all lines are straight, parallel, and at right angles on the pieces. I was having difficulty showing this in the photographs, because of the camera I was using and the size of the room I was shooting in. The pictures show the paintings in their unvarnished state. The individual squares will lay perfectly flat in the final state.)

My email address is: Joshua.Cadmium@gmail.com

This has been the culmination of months of preparation and hard work - blood, sweat, tears, and mental grief - supported by years of training and schooling. I am happy to be sharing this with you. Feel free to let me know what you think. Thank you.

Joshua Cadmium

The Samus Project