Local murals lead to impressive career

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POTTER AND PIKE — Brandon Pike, center, stands amid his creations – Harry Potter  and Dumbledore – at Flagship Cinema in Oxford in the summer of 2009. He also worked at the cinema as a projectionist and in concessions.

OXFORD — Since 2002, the walls of the Oxford Flagship Cinema have been covered with elaborate murals depicting characters from current or upcoming movies.

These have almost become an institution. Beginning with the first Harry Potter film and most recently, The Avengers, they have changed 14 times in the past 10 years. The man behind them, Brandon T. Pike, of Waterford, began painting them when he was just a 14-year-old student at Oxford Hills Middle School.

Now he does art as a full-time job in San Francisco. Though he was always interested in art, the murals were what set Pike on the path he follows today.

“I didn't realize that this was the beginning of something much bigger in my life; something that would set the gears in motion for things to never be the same,” acknowledges Pike.

As a child, he loved to draw superheroes, among other things. While drawing came naturally to him, it wasn’t until he began working on the murals that he learned many painting techniques.

As he began to explore painting at the movie theater and outside of it, he realized that this was what he wanted to do for a career. “As I really began to love to paint, I couldn't see myself doing anything else.”

Pike went to school at the Academy of Art in San Francisco where he majored in illustration, and graduated in 2011. Pike explains that, “I went to San Francisco in pursuit of doing visual development, character design and concept art for feature film and animation," he explained. He had been inspired to continue creating characters like those he had reproduced on the Flagship walls.

Now Pike works for Zynga®, a company that develops games for Facebook, mobile devices, and more. Anyone familiar with Facebook may recognize games that the company has produced like FarmVille™ or Words with Friends™.

Pike is working on a new game called CastleVille™ where he designs characters and other elements of a medieval world. “Now I paint everyday, but instead of on a canvas, it’s now on the computer,” says Pike. Instead of reproducing characters for Flagship, he designs new ones for Facebook.

Pike was able to follow his dream across the country – he came from a small town and is now successful in a big city thousands of miles away. Beginning with the murals at Flagship Cinemas he knew the path that he wanted to follow, and succeeded in doing so.

Now that he is far from the cinema, he’s not sure if he will paint another mural, though he said he would like to. All the same, he recognizes the local support that got him to the place he is today. “If it weren't for the murals at Flagship, the community of Oxford Hills and for the support of my amazing family, I wouldn't be living my dream, everyday.”

In the future, Pike hopes that another student will be able to take his place as the muralist at Flagship. He wants someone else to have the same experience that he once had in the halls of the movie theater, and to be inspired enough to follow their dreams as well.

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WORK IN PROGRESS — In the summer of 2010, Pike painted a mural of the film Iron Man. Here, it is still in progress.