Well I was trying to keep the visuals cartoonish.
There are far more "mature" alterations and tweaks that I could have made, and did in some drawings I threw out, but felt that the spirit of the character was nolonger there. Things that I had done with the character like change the eyes, nose, chin, brow, the facial hair, and adding textures just made things worse. I experimented with trying to make Mario and Luigi more Italian in appearance, but kept coming back to the old drawings for inspiration. I feel that the Mario and Luigi pictures I decided on are closer to the old designs than you think. The real differences aside from the cigar and five oclock shadow are how Luigi's mustache droops low and flips up at the tips. Mario's mustache though is more like the old designs. So what I was trying to do is pass the ball back and forth between the characters. I tried to give both characters the same type of bubble eyes they have always had. There are other designs from Nintendo that feature black dots for eyes and I also considered those types of eyes, but I chose the eyes that had lids just because emotion and thoughts can be expressed through the character without a lot of words. Other differences that are more obvious are how each features Popeye arms. I really like Popeye cartoons. Popeye also smokes. I also stressed the difference in hight and weight between the characters. In some designs I did not show I took these differences and exagerated them. Imagine a lanky tall cartoonish Luigi. I did not like it, but such things could work with certain mushrooms morphing proportions of the characters' bodys'. I gave my designs rounded faces so that they would resemble the old designs more. In other versions I had tried much more definable chins to make them more Italian, but that really changed who the character was to me. The chin was the one thing that really needed to stay the same so there could be a line drawn between the old and the new. I am still torn about whether to give them gloves. The gloves really set off their outfits and say this is a franchise character. Mario belongs to the white glove club; Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, and Sonic the Hedgehog.
The hats were one thing that I really wanted to change. You will notice that Mario features a trucker cap and Luigi has his on backwards. I think it would be a cool little option if you can decide how the character wears their cap.
Topic: Mario 128 early 06 with a fixed camera - EGM (Read 30369 times)
