8-BIT CALAVERA SHOW

"MUERTO PERO NO OLVIDADO"

Ground Kontrol of Portland, OR is doing an awesome "Day of the Dead" art show with NES carts as the canvas. These 40 individual carts will be done by different members of the autumn society and will be arranged to create a larger skull final piece. Great concept and I am looking fwd to seeing everyone's work.

My piece was a runaway spin off from my brainstorming session from the Video Game Gore Show collection of doodles. I had the idea of using NES carts as tombstones and zombie NES characters crawling out of the dirt. Here was my chance to revisit that concept.

 I had my initial sketch planned out and kept the skull boxy to retain the NES cart vibe. I knew from the start that I wanted a sculpted, painted hybrid piece. It was pretty straight forward. Paint the cart, lightly sketch, paint the cart, sculpt the components, paint the components (with the exception of the dirt pile - why paint dirt when you can use dirt? a thin layer of glue and dusted with dirt), and finally hot glue gun the pieces all together. A lovely, unexpected result is that piece actually stands upright on it's own.

 I used to really dislike the Day of the Dead art style and look overall, but after this project I'm pretty happy with the piece and I have a new appreciation for the holiday and it's art. The bright colors and celebration of those that have gone is really great. My wife is very sad to see this piece go, I had to take a lot of pictures and will probably end up making something similar for her as a gift for next year.