Toronto artist creates ‘Avengers’ installation

TORONTO It was nearly a superhero feat for Toronto artist James Raiz ahead of Friday’s opening of “Avengers: Infinity War.”

In only a month, he had to draw a towering mural and capture the entire creative process on video for an international, in-theatre “Avengers: Infinity War” art installation.

And he did it all in the basement of his home, where he lives with his wife and three children.

“I pretty much had the camera going 24 hours a day, no sleep," Raiz, 39, said in a phone interview.

“In the end it turned out to be around 250 hours of work crammed into that month. A lot of work to put it together, for sure. I didn’t leave the house for about a month.”

Measuring roughly five metres wide and five metres high, the installation has two sides and is in Scotiabank Theatre Toronto as well as cinemas in China and the U.S.

One side has screens showing him drawing the entire piece. The other is a mural representing characters in each of the 18 Marvel Cinematic Universe films.

“You can’t do this project without being a fan,” Raiz said.

“To put all that work in a matter of a month, unless the money is insane, it’s really hard to do.”

Raiz grew up in Brampton, Ont., and thought he would become a doctor, until he realized art was his passion.

“My mom was like, ‘Can’t you just do that on the weekends, after surgery?’” he recalled with a laugh.

“So I made I deal with my mom: ‘Let me go to school for this, and if I can't find a job after I’ll get back into medicine.’”

Twenty years later, he's still working as a professional artist, focusing on comic-book characters that have a realistic, cinematic feel.

His You Tube channel, The Box Office Artist, has over 66,000 followers.

Raiz was commissioned to do the “Avengers: Infinity War” installation after creating a major “Star Wars” mural for his YouTube channel that got the attention of Marvel president Kevin Feige.

“They were really supportive in whatever I wanted to do,” Raiz said of Disney. “I would say this whole piece is almost completely my vision.”

THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO, DISNEY Images depicting characters from the films "Black Panther" (left) and “The Avengers” created by James Raiz of Toronto as part of an "Avenger: Infinity War" art installation is seen in this undated handout photo.