From Paint to Brick

I bought this TMNT art piece at an Iam8Bit show for TMNT. I don’t remember all the details and I didn’t know who the artist was so I did some investigating. I took the print out to see if there’s a signature or something and there was! Buffum 2014 10/30. My Googling took me to Jude Buffum. He made 30 of these for the “Cowabunga!! 30 Years of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” Iam8Bit Show. The show started July 19th 2014. The piece is called “As Above, So Below”. And the 10/30 isn’t a date, I have the 10th out of 30. That’s awesome.

This is the first art piece I ever bought. Spent more than I would normally do on “art”. I’m used to buying cool posters for like $8. I remember how much it smelled of paint fumes when I first got it. That made it feel so legit. I thought it looked awesome when I first saw it. It’s pixelated, and has a lot of action going on. Looks like a big battle not only above ground but also below.

The pixels reminded me of LEGO. One day I thought, “I should recreate this with Lego” but man that would be a lot of work. I sat on the idea for years. Where was I supposed to get that many windows? How tall would this actually be? Over the years I started seeing TMNT Lego in stores and thought this dream might be possible soon, maybe if they made the Channel 6 building with windows. Lego lost the license for TMNT but MegaBloks picked it up. (see my other blog)

I was always kind of against the way Mega Bloks made their character. Lego had these blocky mini figs, but Mega Bloks didn’t make their characters blocky. More like chibi. Mini. So I refused to buy TMNT Mega Bloks. But the sets were sooo cool! The Party Wagon was a build. Krang’s big robot thing. The Technodrome!! And the characters didn’t look bad, they just weren’t blocks. So I gave in and started collecting. And then I remember the art piece I had. YO! They look kind of similar, maybe this was the time. There’s a Technodrome in the picture and I have the actual Technodrome in block form! The van too! I just needed windows. Any time I was at a Lego store I would check to see if there were any cool buildings that I could recreate into the 2 buildings in the painting. The Spider-Man Daily Bugle looked promising, but also very expensive. One day I found brick blocks. 1×2 pieces that had block patterns. I think I found them on Wish or something. I bought some, they took a few months to get to me, I think they were knock-offs from China. I almost forgot I ordered them. It was a good start but not enough. I really needed windows. 

Then finally! I stepped into a Lego store and checked out the pick-your-brick section at the back of the store. I usually did but never found windows, until that day. They were small but I could make it work. But there were also brick pattern pieces! This was the sign! I bought a large box and filled it with as many bricks and windows as I could. All that for about $18! Better than the $200+ Spider-Man building. So the project has started. It’s not finished though. I might need to make the building larger than they are now. I need to make a sewer! And then a rocky underground. And a tall shelf to display it. So I’ll slowly find pieces as I’ve been doing so far. I’ll update when I make another leap in the project.