I'm back down in Los Angeles for my spring break and was lucky enough to catch the art signing at the Gallery Nucleus out here. Scott C. was there signing his alternate cover art for King of Kong. If you have the DVD, it's the reverse of the boring crappy cover, and I recommend you flip it to see the cooler one.
http://www.gallerynucleus.com/event/145
First of all, there were free drinks, which was awesome.
Secondly, there was all kinds of awesome Scott C. art on display.
Thirdly, the 20 inch prints of the piece were only $20 and he'd sign them. The line was super slow, but it turned out it was because he'd talk to each person for 5 minutes and personalize your autograph with a little cartoon of anything you wanted. I chatted him up for a few minutes but told him I was going to try to win the art print for free in the Donkey Kong Tournament, and that if I couldn't win one I'd definitely buy one and come back. He wished me luck.
Fourthly, the Donkey Kong tournament was awesome. My first game was a measly 17,000 or so, which put me in 2nd place. Then a guy from earlier came back and tried it a second time and got 64,800, pushing me back into 3rd place. In a fit of rage I got up to 33,900 points, and then took a break to have some free drinks and admire the art on display. Then somebody else gets exactly 33,900 points, tying me. The scorekeeper tracks me down and lets me know that there's now a tie for 2nd place. I get all pumped up and ask if we need to have some crazy tiebreaker or fight to the death or anything, and they just shrug and say we'll just both get the 2nd place prizes. So me and this other guy keep playing over and over in an intense heated battle for 2nd place. I kept choking. So did he. There were times where neither of us passed the first stage. It was pathetic. The barrels were possessed. Then... the fucker got 34,200, beating me by 300 points. He got a purse in the pie factory level right before he lost his last Jumpman. So all I got was the free art print, and this guy got the free art print AND a $20 gift card at the gallery. (Unfortunately the first place bastard got a statue of Donkey Kong's head getting hit by a barrel, a separate $150 Scott C. print of "Ninjas All Over the Place," and a $30 gift card.) So me and the 2nd place duder got our radical prints and walked over to Scott C.'s table to get the last 2 autographs at the end of the night. He went first, and then walked away, at which point I said "Just make sure mine looks cooler than his." And it does! He wrote my full real name, and "official amazing place at Donkey Kong!" and drew 2 people cheering and signed his name.
Then on my way out, I bought the DVD of King of Kong, because I was slacking and still hadn't seen it yet. I went home and watched it. Holy shit. How pathetic were we that the top 3 scores were 64,800, 34,200, and 33,900, when that 800,000 score went unchallenged for 24 years? Those guys are fucking MACHINES. Steve Wiebe 4 life!
Anyway, it was a lot of fun. The Nucleus Gallery is pretty rad and I recommend it to anybody in the Los Angeles area (in Alhambra.) And the web page has a flickr set and links to Scott C's blog about the event.
http://www.gallerynucleus.com/event/145
I think more of the prints are gonna be sold at the iam8bit gallery in May, or whenever it is this year, so they should be at their online store soon too. So far they were exclusive to this event. I'm on a Mac laptop and don't know how to right-click so I can copy the image location to show a close-up of the actual artwork. Can anybody help by tossing in a nice shot of the artwork for me? Thanks.
PACE out,
Rubang B's ghastly ghost
