Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Super Smash Brothers!



A little something for the OG smash fans out there! Keep reading and get some insights into the choices I made with the piece and a chance to check out each character up close and personal!



This was just a fun side project for me between other illustrations. If you know anything about the man behind the Pi its that Smash has been one of the biggest influences in my life and it all started with the original 8 from Super smash brothers on the Nintendo 64. For a while now I've wanted to do something grand to honor this little hobby of mine so I put a side a few days and did this. A piece featuring each of the original 8 cast members doing their signature neutral special from back during the 64 days; back before link had his Bow; and when fox's laser had hit stun.

On these guys I wanted to do something simple and clean... ish. I used a rough chalk style brush form line work and just did flat color. And tried to rely on strong poses and silhouettes to carry each character instead of detailed (and time consuming) rendering. I think for most of the cast it works! You can keep scrolling maybe you'll find your favorite character somewhere down there!

Yoshi!




Back in the day Yoshi was a character that didn't get much play. I inspite of Yoshi's Island game being on of my favorite video game characters Yoshi just didn't stack up in comparison to the rest of the cast for me and I don't think I could tell you much about his 64 incarnation outside of his special moves and signature double jump.
Still though Yoshi's design is so simple and Iconic he has always been a fun character for me to draw!

Samus!




My favorite Bounty hunter! Ms. Samus Aran is actually another character that I didn't end up investing hardly any time into back in the day despite her being one of if not my favorite character in gaming. Well to be fair that revelation didn't happen until late into my high school career playing through the master piece that is Super Metroid but that may be a discussion for another day.
That signature charge shot of hers was VERY hard to figure out how to put on paper and I'm rarely satisfied when I draw her.

Pikachu!


Now Pikachu is a character I know a little something about from smash! I picked up pika after my link kept getting knocked off stage and couldn't make it back. Pika's super powerful down air was all I needed back then to win games!
I actually had a lot of fun "redesigning" pika and *gasp* showing the inner ear! The thunder jolt was fun to figure out as well and I don't think it looks too out of place with this kind of rendering style despite the high level of detail.

Mario!



Mr. Nintendo himself! I've always love what Mario has done for gaming. and it seems like every time a new system hits the market Nintendo is using him to reinvent the platforming genre. Well... smash was no different. Even the original game in it's blocky glory set a standard that still to day is hard to compete with.
I think Mario was of of the first I did. I had a lot of fun figuring a cool pose to put him in. I think his eyes and mouth have a lot of style and personality to them. I think Mario was one of my most successful characters in this set. Oh and I like the fire ball too!

Link!



I believe Link was the first character I tackled in this set and with good reason. Link was easily my most used character. I just loved the sense of adventure Zelda games had even years ago (because boy breath of the wild almost has me paralyzed right now...) But I also like his play style in game the projectile heavy character that could use bombs and his trusty boomerang to keep foes at bay and a timely down air to shoot them off into space once they finally dodged through the onslaught!
I think I did link the biggest disservice with a pretty clunky silhouette that wouldn't read well on its own and boring pose, but maybe I'm being too hard on myself here.

Kirby!


That's a name you should know! Man I freaking LOVE Kirby he is just so love-ably simple in every way! Another character that I adore and didn't play very much...
Kirby is actually pretty simple to draw. just a circle with eyes and a mouth. so it can be tricky doing something with that limitation to make him still look interesting and dynamic. I think I had a success in this one.

Fox!


Fox McCloud! Fox is actually the reason we owned a Super Nintendo growing up. My dad was so impressed with the graphics of Starfox he jumped at the chance to get the system. I've always loved the Starfox series but it wasn't until Starfox 64 that I really fell in love with the characters. As a James I've always been upset that there is no James McCloud skin for Fox in any of the smash games. Just give Fox some shades!
I think this was my most successful character I took some liberties by not giving fox his metallic legs, but I think it was the right choice here.

DK!



Donkey Kong is here! DK is a cool character but has a kid I had zero interest in heavy weight characters so I probably still to this day have never played 64's iteration of DK.
Now that said as a character artist, WOW, DK is awesome. throw a tie with "DK" letters on it and you become Donkey Kong, I love symbolic elements like that on a character that transcend any other design choices (same thing with Mario and link's hats) I had a lot of fun figuring out DK's angry face I might have been able to get some speed lines in to make it look like he was actually winding a punch up though in retrospect... hmm...

AND! THAT ALL 8!
Well if you got this far them I'm interested; who of the original cast if your favorite? Who was your favorite to play as? You know mine already so let me know yours down below. Or if you have any comments or suggestions as to what I should be doing next let me know that too!
As always guys God bless be safe. See you on the flip!

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