Jude Buffum

There are many talented artists who honour their favourite videogames by building faithful homages to their most recognisable characters, pixel by painstaking pixel, sprite by meticulously-crafted sprite. Jude Buffum prefers a different approach, cheerfully decapitating your heroes before lopping them into juicy cuts and proferring them to you on a platter of pixels. We caught up with Jude to discuss what possesses him to take the knife to these iconic characters, how politics informs his work, and why Ocarina Of Time is the best videogame ever made.

infinitecontinues: Hi Jude. Who are you and what do you do?

Jude Buffum: My name is Jude Buffum and I am an artist living in Philadelphia. I graduated from the Tyler School of Art in 2001 with a BFA in Graphic Arts and Design. My commercial projects run the gamut from graphic design to illustration, though what I enjoy most is creating work for galleries, since there are usually no limits to what I can create.

ic: Tell us about your meat diagrams of popular videogame characters. How did such a bizarre idea come about?

JB: I’ve actually had a morbid fascination with old butcher diagrams for a long time. So instead of doing an exploded diagram of the various cuts from a cow or pig, I decided to show how to slice up various videogame characters. The idea is that after Mario defeats Koopa he slices him up and fries a steak… served with a side of mushrooms, of course. My girlfriend is a vegetarian, so I’ve been adding more vegan meals to my recipe book lately, and I have been doing some research into the industry at her prodding, and I guess this kind of came out of that.

Koopa – It’s What’s For Supper

ic: Take us through the process, from start to finish, of how you create one of your meat diagram artworks?

JB: Well the first thing I did was put together a reference library of butcher diagrams; you know, familiarise myself with all the different cuts and try and figure out which characters would work best. I believe I did the Koopa one first, so I figured beef would work. Pork made me think of Ganon and Chocobo seemed like a good fit for poultry. I did want to do Yoshi, so I figured he’d be similarly sliced. I eat a lot of sushi, so I figured the Mario sea life would be most recognizable (though my girlfriend really wanted me to do Magikarp from Pokemon). Anyway, I created the characters first, then I decided where to slice them up, added the cross sections. After that it was just a matter of coming up with a good layout for the type and other diagrammatic elements that would work for all of them.

The Incredible Edible Chocobo

ic: Were there any other characters you considered that didn’t make the cut? (Pun totally intended.)

JB: It’s funny you should ask… the first piece I did was actually Birdo, from Super Mario Bros 2. The initial idea was to do something inspired by Thanksgiving since the show opened in November. The initial piece was Mario as a pilgrim carving Birdo. But I thought it was a little too morbid for the sake of being morbid, and thought doing something more diagrammatic rather than based on a scene would be more clever.
And there were a few other characters I considered, or even started. Initially I wanted to do one larger piece for sushi, using the Zora character from Zelda. But then I decided to do two smaller sushi pieces, and it made more sense to use Gesso (Blooper) and Pukupuku (Cheep Cheep) from Super Mario. I may still do a Zora down the road if all the butcher pieces sell out.

ic: How did you first get inspired by pixels as a vehicle for making your artworks?

JB: Around the time of the 2000 elections I was very frustrated and needed a creative outlet to vent. At the same time, I had been painting 8-bit videogame characters, just to decorate my house with, and then I started thinking there might be a way to combine the two. One of the first pixel-based pieces I did was the Mega Man vs Dick Cheney piece. I had come to this realization that the people in charge of the country were more evil than the videogame villains that I fought when I was a little kid. So I think that’s really what’s at the core of my work: contrasting the serious real life problems that we face with the fantasy-based problems (rescue the princess, save the world, etc) we faced as children growing up on videogames. For the “I Am 8-Bit” shows I expanded this approach to other themes such as exploring how sexual desire fuels capitalism (the “Happy Ending” series) and even our motivations for creating religion (“And On the Seventh Day R.O.B. Rested”).

And On The Seventh Day R.O.B. Rested

ic: Your portfolio shows a lot of crossovers with film, music and err… Carebears. What inspires these pieces? Or do these works come about because your clients want you to fit their ideas into your pixel aesthetics?

JB: I do a lot of gallery shows that revolve around a theme of some sort, particularly at Gallery 1988. For example the Gremlins, Goonies, and Ghostbusters pieces were for “The 3G Show” which revolved around those films. The Carebears piece I did, along with the Rainbow Brite piece, for a show that revolved around pop culture in the 1980s. I think that pop culture subject matter fits well with my style, because my aesthetic is itself a product of pop culture. I enjoy taking a subject from one medium, such as film or television, and viewing it through the lens of another medium, videogames.

80s Pop! Carebear piece

ic: What other pixel projects do you have in the works?

JB: I’m currently working on some illustrations of a Hollywood actor who wants me to do 8-bit portraits of him for his website. I am also working on the packaging for the new Doctor Octoroc album, “After These Messages”. I have a number of shows coming up next year too. For one of them I will be creating a piece inspired by the late comedian, Mitch Hedberg.

ic: Finally, what’s the best videogame ever made?

JB: I would probably go with the Zelda game, Ocarina of Time. I’m a big fan of the Zelda series, but I think that one was the best in terms of story and gameplay, especially for its time. The games that came after were great too, but when OoT was released it was so far ahead of its time I was blown away. If we’re talking 8-bit, I might go with Megaman 2. I still play that at least a few times a year. If you want to go back even further to the Coleco/Atari days, I was a huge fan of Jumpman Junior and the four player game Warlords.

ic: Thanks for taking the time to talk to us, Jude.

If you like Jude’s pixellated meat diagram pieces, you can go and get yourself a limited edition, signed print from his shop. You can also go view his website, read his blog, see all the meat diagrams on his Flickr page and like him on Facebook. What a time we live in, eh? While you’re there, why not like infinitecontinues on Facebook, too.