Artist Robert Xavier Burden likes to recreate the nerdy glee he felt with new toys as a kid. The San Francisco artist spends months at a time creating large-scale paintings of Batman, Superman and even a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle here and there. And the scale at which he works means each painting can take hundreds of hours.
So, for his latest work – an 11' by 7' painting of Optimus Prime – he decided to make a time-lapse of the whole process from beginning to end. The result (above) is about 1,000 hours of work over 8 months compiled into one clip that, from start to finish, only takes about 90 seconds to watch.
"I've made a few in the past, but I've never made a time-lapse video that I'm in," Burden said in an email to Wired. "I've always stepped out of the frame every time the picture was being taken. I initially thought this was a better idea because then it was more about the art and process, not me. But I think it might actually be more entertaining with me working and moving around in frame."
Burden's massive ode to Transformers, titled "The Autobot," is currently on display as part of the artist's show Toy Box at the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco. The piece, for which Burden bought a fully complete Megatron toy to use as reference, is up for sale for $24,000 – probably less than a vintage 18-wheeler, and ten times as cool.
However, for those who just want an Optimus Print and to support a good cause, Burden is offering The Autobot as one of many rewards for the Kickstarter to fund his next massive undertaking – painting his Star Wars action figures.
