Artist Campbell Whyte has embarked on a noble adventure: every day, he’s painting a picture based on a Nintendo Entertainment System game. Every. Last. One.
Going off a Wikipedia compendium of 799 English-language games as his “master list”, Whyte will be going through the NES’ entire collection one by one, chronologically by order of release date, until there’s a small painting based on the characters and/or artwork of every single one.
“I have no doubt about getting through all of the games”, Whyte tells Kotaku. “I did a daily illustration project back in 2003 (I think) which lasted the distance. It’s always the first two weeks that are the hardest, but once you get in to the routine, once you make it part of your daily behaviour you don’t even really think about it.”
An Australian living in Perth, Whyte works by day at Western Australia’s State Museum, and by night toils away on stuff like this and his upcoming graphic novel.
“Since the birth of my son, my perspective of time has really stretched and warped. In a positive way, so I’m a lot more patient and can see the benefits of longer term projects. Really investing in something and seeing it through.”
He’s going to need that patience; with only a handful of games so far painted up, he’ll be working on the project for at least two years.
To help keep things moving (and, I guess, to stop his studio being buried) Whyte is selling each of the pieces on Etsy (linked below). If you see one you like, you can grab the one-of-a-kind from there, and if not, with over 700 games to go he’s more than happy to take requests for custom works as well.
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