Popular culture is culture. To see that, you need to look no further than the tons of art that pop-culture icons like Pac-Man inspire.
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“I am shocked that people are interested,” Baranowski told GamesBeat. “I put [the posters] up on my personal page and had friends ask me what the heck I was doing. So I decided to put them up on Behance and [thought] that perhaps people would find them and be amused.” Behance.com is an art-portfolio website that artists can use to display their work. Baranowski had no idea that the images were taking off until he received a Tweet from a friend about it.
“I love minimalism, and Pac-Man really suited what I wanted to accomplish,” he said. “Heck, it allowed me to make 12 different posters in a single day. It was the simplicity of the characters that I took a liking to.”
The Madison, Wis.-based artist told us that the images don’t have any real deep meaning, but he’s happy that people find them engaging.
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“Propaganda has always interested me,” said Baranowski. “I was amazed how it was used in World War I and World War II, which is where the inspiration came from. In the end, with this series, I wanted people to be amused and see the world from a different perspective.”
Baranowski doesn’t know when he’ll work on more game-related art in the future but says it’s bound to happen.
“I do not plan that much,” he said. “I tend to get an idea stuck in my head, and then I just sit down and make it. It almost never looks like what I imagined in my head, but that is not a bad thing.”
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Right now, Baranowski doesn’t have an online store to sell his prints, but he’s open to making arrangements if you contact him through Facebook.