Renowned tattoo artist/muralist Mister Cartoon’s exclusively designed billboard for the upcoming feature film Gangster Squad was unveiled at Platinum Motorsport’s wall on the iconic Sunset Strip Wednesday, Dec. 5^th. He also painted live additions to the piece on-site. Mister Cartoon was available for interviews regarding the project as well as his development of a customized Gangster Squad car, which will be on display at the 2012 LA Auto Show and traveling to additional locations throughout the country.

We had the opportunity to speak with Mister Cartoon and ask him about his general process and how he gets inspired for a project, particularly the billboard for the movie. He explained that in this case he drew inspiration from the movie itself, “I drew the inspiration from watching the movie and being a fan of a lot of the actors that work in the movie.” Yet he always remains faithful to his personal style and avoids being influenced too much by his subject, “but I just stuck to what I do, I don’t want to stray too far from my original style.”

He also explained how being a part of this project is something that’s going to keep him busy for a while. When asked about his future plans he said, “Right now I’m gonna go on tour so I’m gonna go to Miami, Chicago, New York and promote the movie.” The car he designed for the movie is also going on a nationwide tour.

Being in front of an artist that has gained so much respect and fan base by becoming one of the most prolific exponents of street art, we took the chance to ask him about street tagging, the art of street graffiti these days and how youngsters are being arrested all over the world for doing this since its considered vandalism instead of art, “Learning graffiti if they like graffiti they can get into other things like sign painting, you know, tattooing, this is kind of showing how graffiti can be used to support your family, I don’t think that graffiti art is negative but it does make me sad that youngsters are getting arrested for it.”  He mentioned how he went through a similar thing when he was at a young age and how he decided to take another path, “I decided to make a change, and get more into computer graphics and sign paintings, cause I love letters, and I got into doing gold leaves and sign paints, kind of save my life.” This answer was as humble and honest as the art he tries to express, a man who has struggled to achieve popular success while doing what he loves.

The upcoming custom car tour events of an exclusive viewing of a 1939 Chevrolet Master Deluxe customized by Mister Cartoon and inspired by Gangster Squad will take place at 5pm in El Paso 12/10 at the AMC Westgate Theater, Phoenix 12/12 at the Cinemark West Theater and Albuquerque 12/13 at the Cinemark Century Rio Theater.

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Gangster Squad hits theaters nationwide on Jan. 11, 2013.