Super Mario World 2005

After my first mario paintings sold at the show, the curators asked me to do another peice for the closing party. For some reason I forgot about all the pain that went into the first 3 pieces and decided to do the "ultimate mario painting". I started to think of the best game to do. As luck would have it, I just played through "Super Mario World" for the SNES a couple of months before this. I was blown away by the sprites, the gameplay the environments, music and characters in that game, so the chioce was natural. I started with some reference-oh the wonders of the internets! Then drawing-- I couldn't stop, and before I knew it, I redesigned pretty much every character in the game!


That's good for the enemies but what about the stars?! Well, those are always the most fun:

Then once I was happy with some of those characters, I figured out how to fit 'em all in there!

Now color! The best part! The most fun! When I started referencing the colors of the game, I found out that Miyamoto/Nintendo actually had a real color script in the game! Wow! Even more genius! So I tried to incorporate that:

Yes, this is a color comp created in flash. I find it's the easiest way to resize/color/layer and export everything.
So, now the most dreadful part of the piece must commence...the painting! Here's some rare pics of the work in progress.

Well, after the second night, I finished the Background, and I hated it! I thought it looked terrible!
So, the next night I completely started over and repainted the entire background!
Then the characters...

Then finally, after 4 nights, the "ultimate mario painting" which turned into the "ultimate pain in the butt" was finished!

Here's some other doodles from the first Mario pieces:

Now that I'm all caught up on old paintings, time for some new ones!