Yo. I'm here today to be a giant fucking nerd for you guys, because, I've been super excited to get this piece for awhile now. This is an idea I've wanted done for, like, 4 or 5 years now but I could never just have the spare cash to pull out of my ass to afford it. Until recently, when the crypto markets picked anyways, which leads us to this fucking magical piece of testosterone and masculinity. Growing up, I was really obsessed with the Godzilla films. I probably had every single one on VHS from the 60s into the 90s, and I watched the fuck out of them for years as a kid. I've probably seen every Godzilla film anywhere from 7-45 times over depending on the movie (Yes, even the cursed Son of Godzilla movie). Which, is quite a bit considering there was 23 films at the time for me to watch. My love for the big G continued into my adulthood, and I reckon I'll always have a huge spot in my heart for him. So, of course I needed to have a real high quality piece on my wall dedicated to my favorite era of Godzilla films, the Heisei era.
I stared buying prints off a shop called Wonderbros back in 2016, and quickly found myself a big fan of their designs and style. I would occasionally grab something over the years here and there from them, specifically Mike, and kept up with him over Instagram. He started doing these special type of paintings where he'd go to a thrift store and get an acrylic landscape painting for cheap there, and then re-purpose them into whatever he wanted or whatever a customer asked for in a commission. He's done a bunch of really fucking cool ones in the past, ranging from Star Wars and Marvel themed stuff, to even horror pieces and what originally drew me to wanting one of these landscape pieces, a Godzilla themed piece. He posted a Showa era Godzilla landscape piece in, like, 2017 or 2018 and I literally about creamed my jeans when I saw it. While Showa isn't my absolute favorite era, I still loved that era of Godzilla and it was fucking cool as shit to see.
Here's a peak of it via a horrible quality screenshot, since I don't wanna blue ball you fucking losers.
At the time, I was lusting over getting myself this type of painting from Mike, even more than the catholic church does over choir boys. But, I was a broke bitch so it just got stored in the back of my mind until I could finally afford to toss some money his way to get the hookup. That finally happened, and Mike being such an easy, cool guy to work with absolutely killed it with what I was asking for. Covid kind of limited our options for the canvas to work with. As, he didn't want to go out to thrift stores too much while the pandemic has been happening. So, I had 4 options to choose from. One of which being, like, 3x5 feet long and wide which would have been insanely expensive so I had to pass (Though, it would have also been a huge flex). I ended up going with the 12x16 inch piece he had, since it had the most open space to work with (And, also the cheapest. I'm not fucking made of money, I'm still pretty god damn broke). I gave him a list of 5 characters I really wanted and he ended up doing an extra one for me for funsies because he's the GOAT. And, there's even a little easter egg tossed in that most people would probably miss. Check it out, you sweet summer child.
Yeah, to say that I'm stoked would be an absolute understatement, honestly. If I was still a kid and got this, I'd probably have run to the nearest Chuck E Cheese to finger blast myself in the ball pit out of sheer excitement. This is hands down my favorite painting out of any that I've purchased over the years. Granted, I only own, like, 15 in total with most of them being little 3x4 inch paintings. So, I'm not exactly the P. Diddy of the art collection world or anything. But, yeah. Super cool piece to have on the wall. The characters featured in the painting are Godzilla of course, MechaGodzilla, SpaceGodzilla, Mecha King Ghirdorah, Mothra and Battra. He decided to do a kind of mexican stand off type of vibe for the ground and air, which I think works nicely.
Another random fact I forgot to mention is that sometimes you might find out that the paintings he used are worth money, though I've no idea about mine specifically. While talking to him about doing this, he mentioned previously that one of these landscape portraits he used for a commission ended up being from a semi well known artist. He paid around $40-50 for it at the thrift shop, and it ended up being a $1500 painting that he painted some stormtroopers over. So, you know, that's pretty funny. At least in my case, I can only imagine that the exquisite changes that have been made have only added value to the piece. I'd reckon at bare minimum Godzilla alone adds 3.7 billion yen to the value, yes, indeeeeed.
But, yeah. Just wanted to show off my cool new painting. If anyone is interested in checking out more of Mikes work, or buying something for yourself like this, you can find him on Etsy (Wonderbros, where they also sell custom made toys which are neat) or Instagram (Wonderbros_Mike).
So, until next time, doods.
Later!