100 Days of Drawing: Day 17

Today I once again combined to of my favourite things; drawing and video games, especially Mario. I'm a massive Nintendo Fanboy, have been since I was a kid and probably always will be. What I did for this one was sketch it in pencil then I did all the outlines with a Sharpie and then I did all the coloured hatching (I can't remember what this style of hatching is called) using a Bic RS2 Finepoint ballpoint pen.

I hope you like it, I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Mike

He Never Comes First

See, this is what you get when you and your son play Mario Kart 8 every night since it's release, you get a Mario Kart themed cartoon! My son Dash and I have been loving Mario Kart 8, except I let him win all the time. No I tell a lie, I try to not let him fall behind too much and then find it hard to actually try and win by the end. Which is kind of frustrating, it's actually quite hard, usually the only way I can win is to completely smash him, which is not nice so I try to make it look close, but most of the time I just cock it up and lose.

I'm actually kind of bummed that I didn't think of this idea a week ago so I could have posted it as Mario Kart launched, but oh well. And it's also just a coincidence that I've done a Mario cartoon 2 weeks in a row. 

Now the real inspiration for this cartoon is that damned Blue Shell, god I hate that thing! Oh if you've never played a Mario Kart game then this cartoon probably makes no sense to you. Let me explain about ol' Blue, it's a weapon that's given to you when you suck and are miles behind 1st place and it flies off and explodes on the person coming first and there's nothing you can do about it! Well until Mario Kart 8 when they introduced a new weapon that now counters it. But the issue with it always is when the computer controlled opponents use it, which is usually just before you're about to come first then Boom! You come second, damn cheating computer!! If you ever want to see an good example of a computer controlled opponent cheating, play a Mario Kart game on 150CC difficulty, cheating bastards! Anyway, so that's how I got the idea, I thought about poor Mario being stopped from "coming first" by a Blue Shell.

Alrighty, time to go, see you next time!

Mike

In It for the Coins

My son and I just got the new Mario Kart 8 the other day (honestly I couldn't tell you who was more excited about this game coming out, him or me!) , so expect so more Mario themed cartoons ;-) I should have planned this better and done an actual Mario Kart joke for this week and if fact I did think of one during the week, oh well. So maybe there might be another Mario cartoon  next week, maybe....In all seriousness, what the hell does Mario do with all those coins he collects anyway?

My current quest to revisit and revise my drawing methods and equipment continues this week, this cartoon was drawn on some new paper I'm trailing. It's photo paper, which is the paper that's designed to print out photos on and it'd awesome! Although I've found that some pens don't work on it as well as others, but the ink is vibrant, dark, dries almost instantly and doesn't bleed at all. It's a lot more glossy than the paper I used to use and I've also stopped tracing onto the paper with a non-photo blue pencil as this paper doesn't hold pencil very well, but I found that gives me a cleaner image anyway. The best bit is that I've found a supply of old 'clearance' stock of this paper cheap at 2 different shops, so I stocked up. Once again I'm planning on typing up and showing my experimenting in a post soon, speaking of which, I hate to jinx it, but it looks like my brand new Blog site may be up and running soon! So excited, I'll keep you posted.

Until next time!

Mike

Can't Get It (1) Up

Sometimes the best ideas arise just from what you do in your everyday life, like this cartoon for example, which came from playing lots of Mario! Let me explain, you see my 3 year old son Dash has liked video games for a little while now, which anyone who knows me can tell you that's no real big surprise, but of late Mario games have become his current obsession. He's always been a big Mario fan, I think it's just now that his skills at Mario games are actually getting quite good, so he can play the games properly. It's actually quite scary how good he's getting, he can easily finish whole levels by himself, in both 3D and 2D Mario games! So Dash and I have been enjoying a fair amount of time playing New Mario on my WiiU, I know, it's a tough gig being a stay-at-home parent. 

I kind of had this vague idea about Mario getting big from mushrooms quite awhile ago, but during some 'Mario time' with Dash last week this full idea came to be about Mario using power-up mushrooms to 'power-up' his 'equipment'. I do enjoy drawing Mario as well, so any excuse will do. Oh and just in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, in the Mario games, Mario grows bigger when he grabs a power-up mushroom like the one I've drawn.

So, in the next couple of weeks I'm really hoping to get some extra 'toons saved up, as in about 2 weeks or so I'm going on a family trip to New Zealand for 2 weeks. If I get them done in time, I can set up Blogger to automatically upload them at the same time I usually do while I'm gone. I just need to find a way to automatically do some social network promotion at the same time, as most of my regular traffic comes from Facebook and other sites. I'll look into it, I'm sure there's a way to do it, I'll keep you posted.

Anyway, see you next time! Thanks for reading!

Mike

Stockholm Syndrome

Hello again my friends! Not much to really talk about the idea of this cartoon this week. I only really got the idea on Saturday whilst I was at work (my other, real 'job' in retail), which makes sense considering I sell video games, it's only a matter of time until I have a Mario themed idea. Especially as his face is plastered everywhere. I guess it also helps that I'm a massive Nintendo fan-boy as well. I did use the method I mentioned last week for fine-tuning the idea by pretty much thinking about it all day Sunday before I spend the night drawing it up. I'm a big fan of this now, it really helps me fine-tune things more.

So seriously, Bowser kidnaps Princess Peach so damn much, surely something is going on there right? Well that was what I thought about, when I came up with this idea anyway. So, just in case you don't know, nearly every single Mario game is pretty much you, as Mario trying to rescue his chick, Princess Peach from this big bad turtle named Bowser. So, I'm pretty sure they're secretly getting it on and Mario's just a dumb-ass...well until he see's his new son has a turtle tail that is.

Alrighty, it's getting late (I'm typing this on Sunday night just after finishing the cartoon) so I'm going to bed, see you next time!

Mike

Friday Night Art 9

I had an idea the other day, I always wanted to use my Friday nights to experiment with different art styles and the other day at work (don't tell anyone) I did this quick (seriously it was, what do you think I stand around all day scribbling?) drawing of good old Mario. If you didn't already know, I'm a big gamer and a huge Nintendo fan-boy, so Mario is kind of my hero and seen as though I work in a games department his lovely face is all over the place. So I had the idea to use this Friday to experiment with drawing Mario in different styles and such, in fact I like the idea so much I think I might experiment with some other of my favourite characters over the next few Fridays. I didn't have all that much time tonight, so here's a bunch of quick Mario sketches I whipped up, I'll do some more next week:

So what do you think? I really like the last one here and I think I might do something with it in the future.....

Later!

Mike