The Warrior's Day Off by Buff Monster

Buff Monster is a New York City street artist who uses bright colors, bold lines and funny characters to make the world a better place. He names heavy metal music, ice cream, pop art, Japanese culture and graffiti as major influences. For over 20 years, he has painted murals around the world and is included in Banksy’s Oscar-nominated documentary “Exit Through the Gift Shop.” His meticulously-executed paintings have been shown in galleries around the world; the Bristol City Museum has a painting in their permanent collection. He’s worked with some of the most recognizable brands, such as Disney, Hello Kitty, Samsung, Nike and Coca-Cola. In 2020, he did the lettering for Justin Bieber’s latest album, “Changes.” Under the Stay Melty brand, he releases a variety of limited-edition collectibles, including toys, prints, stickers and trading cards.
The Warrior’s Day Off is the latest collection of scenes from a story that I’ve been telling for almost ten years. I’ve been slowly revealing the story of Mister Melty and friends fighting the Dark Lord in paintings and murals since 2012. It’s an epic tale of good versus evil, and the central character has always been the Warrior. He is the one defending the lifestyle, culture, and optimism of the inhabitants of Lollipop Land. He represents the artistic spirit; of fighting off the cynics, the time-wasters, and others that seek to stifle creativity and maintain the status quo. Art collectors, too, are warriors, taking a stand against blank walls and stale art to support and encourage the artists on the front lines, pushing the bounds. We’re all in this noble pursuit together. I think the bright colors of optimism will always triumph over the neutral tones of negativity.
For this collection, I aimed to make pieces that I couldn’t have done before and to tell a story that I hadn’t expressed before. So rather than focus on the struggle and victory of this timeless battle, I wanted to explore the more human side of the conflict. I looked into why the Warrior fights and the toll that it takes. I also wanted to create pieces in new ways but that were consistent with my existing methods. So instead of learning a range of 3D rendering software, I mainly constrained myself to use digital facsimiles of my usual analog studio supplies (acrylic paint, brushes, airbrush, and spray paint).
The battle, like good art, is timeless. So naturally, I set out to create work that would be timeless, like digital paintings (still images) and looping animations. I wanted to use new digital technologies to create images that would be impossible in the physical world. This also allowed me to endlessly tweak and perfect them to search for the ultimate, ideal representation. And as digital pieces, they will exist in this perfect, flawless state forever.
The 2D animated pieces started as digital drawings, prepared in the way that I would typically prepare silkscreen prints. I would have painstakingly drawn them by hand with ink and brush, but I switched to digital drawings a few years ago. And while I’ve done some simple animations before, these are the most complex animations to date.
The 3D animated pieces started as hand-sculpted pieces from many years ago. Last year they were 3D scanned, touched up, and now fully rendered. This level of production quality would be almost impossible to achieve in a physical figure.
The main pieces in the collection are the most ambitious digital paintings I’ve ever created. Usually, the digital drawings and paintings that I do are limited to preparatory work for analog pieces. The most detailed of those has been the final artwork for The Melty Misfits trading cards (and those are always printed small). But since these pieces would live forever in the digital world, a whole new level of craftsmanship was required. I labored over the sketches, and then diligently outlined and filled in everything, before finally coloring and rendering the final pieces.