Swing your arms from side to side...

...c'mon it's time to go do the Mario!

Oh hey there, whatcha doooin'?

Anywho, I just painted the brothers Mario for PaletteSwap!

Here's the uncropped version of the painting.

While painting this illustration, I was thinking a lot about what it would be like for two Brooklyn-based, Italian plumbers to get transported into the Mushroom Kingdom. These two guys (brothers) know nothing of the crazy, upside down world they've just found themselves in. There's evil mushrooms, dragons that fly in mechanical clown heads, and mutant fire-spitting plants- and the only thing to make it any better is all the gold lying (or floating) around. But there's no store to buy stuff, so you can't do anything with it! You just get to try again if you happen to fall into a bottomless pit. Yay you!

So in terms of the Mario brothers' posture, there's a bit of irritation and unhappiness there. I figure that my brothers and I would probably be pretty irritated with our new home rather than go around joyfully stomping the life out of evil mushroom people.

It's been a while since I made a painting for PaletteSwap (here is a link to my old PSwaps). This time I wanted to go for a classic! Super Mario World was and continues to be one of my favorite SNES games. I love so much about it: the explorable, ever changing world map, the secret ways of beating levels, the art and the adventure. I remember playing it with my own brothers and just poring over different ways of beating the levels...I played it consistently years later with my (now) wife. It's a go-to classic and I can't wait to play it with my kids. Although their built-in cranial micro processors may not be backwards compatible. Gaaahh technology...FOILING MY PLANS AGAIN!!

Ahem, sorry about that. Here's my PaletteSwap:

I found a really nice, clean, high resolution image of the original SNES box sold in the states and mussed it up a little with the powers of Photoshop to give it an older feel. Enjoy!

Super Mario was created by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka

Super Mario Bros. and all related material is copyright Nintendo

Dragons on the move...

I was playing around today with the old NES sprite animations for Double Dragon. I used their funky, 3 frame walk cycle to create little cartoon guys. Who knew it was animated gif day?! The background was thrown together rather hurriedly so I may go back in and  tune up the drawings while I fix the background. Then again, they may just stay like this as an excercise. Feel free to use them as avatars as long as you link back here or give me credit. :)

Double the Dragon, Double the Fun

Double Dragon.

This is a game with so much awesomeness going for it that its hard not to love it. I grew up playing the arcade version of the game at a local neighborhood convenience store. This was one of those places where they had maybe two or three fluttering flourescent lights and what must have been 20 year old pickles in jars on the counter filled with Reanimator bright green pickle juice. Tucked away in the front corner of the store was a line of literally the cream of the crop arcade stand up machines. It really puzzles me, looking back, to understand how this store had such great games. I doubt that the crotchety older gentleman who owned the place knew what he was doing when he was picking which games to put in his store. Maybe he was a time traveller, knowing that his proper selection of grade A game choices would set up a lifetime of illustration fodder for me. Yeah, thats it. Thank you, you space-time continuum tripping sourpuss. Thank you.

Ah, but I digress. The home version of Double Dragon on the Nintendo, as well as the arcade, was perfect in its simplicity. The main difference being the one player aspect of the NES port (but I’ll go on about that later.) The game is perfectly simple; it tells you all you need to know about your motivation for the coming beat down that will be laid to the evil Shadow Warrior gang in the first couple seconds of gameplay. There is no long written out intro, there is this:

WHHHHHHHHAAAAAAT??!!

Those dudes just gut punched your girl and walk away with her like an evil marching band! It’s on like Donkey Kong.

And so you travel through this relatively short yet ridiculously difficult game learning new moves, fighting new enemies and getting closer to rescuing your girlfriend.

As I said, the main difference between the home NES version and the arcade game was the number of players. The arcade game, which came out first, offered two player, simultaneous beat em up action. The players would work side by side, as brothers Billy and Jimmy Lee. The storyline was to rescue their uh, collective girlfriend from this rival gang. So kids around the world got used to fighting side by side with their primary color clad brother in a display of brotherly love that was downright sickening.

On the other hand, the NES port of the game disposed of the two player together aspect entirely. I’ve read online that this was because programmers had problems making the NES work well with the simultaneous fighting but I offer you a different reason. I think that the way Jimmy Lee is revealed in this game offers a bit more exitement to the storyline. In the arcade game, you work your way through the gang until you meet machine gun toting Willy. He is the boss of the gang and when you defeat him, you save your girl. In the home port, after defeating Willy, it is revealed that the until now invisible Jimmy Lee was behind the capture of your beautiful girlfriend. WHAT?! Bro come on, really?

So the game takes on this underlying sibling rivalry that wasn’t really present in the original. I like it, you can do what you will with it.

SO anyway, whew! On to the illustration. This game always makes me think of the Warriors film. Gosh I love that movie. Can you dig it? The costumes, the feel of the atmosphere and the ridiculous attitudes of the characters just made it so fun. In a way, this illustration is dedicated to the fun of that film as well as Double Dragon. In my mind, they go hand in hand.

The characters, Abobo and Chin Tamei even make an appearance in this illustration because what fanboy doesn’t remember the sheer terror when an Abobo appeared or the utter frustration that was fighting Chin?

This is an original illustration made for the bros at PaletteSwap. I was honored to be able to choose the theme for January for the video game cover art blog. My theme: Double Dragon of course!

So, if you’d like to hang this guy on your wall and remember the good ‘ol days with a couple of spiteful, angry brothers, you can go and order a print at my shop.

Abobo lives, brother!

Still working piecemeal on this illustration project. If you don’t know Abobo at this point you really should.

He’s a Double Dragon villain but more importantly he is the star of his own video game:Abobo’s Big Adventure. I had no part in this game…I just think it’s fantastic. It is fun and highly playable. Did I mention it is free? If you are the kind of awesome that I think you are, you can figure out how to hook up a controller to your computer and play it that way. Do the Googles bro.

Original Abobo:

This is something like how my Abobo will be looking:

Original Abobo image courtesy of the Sprite Database

Brothers don’t shake hands, brothers hug.

I have two brothers. One older, one younger. None of us have the ability to shoot fireballs, fly, turn into statues, frogs, raccoons, jump over lava pits that are ten times as long as we are tall. I know two brothers who do have those abilities and more. You may think that those abilities would make these two guys an inseparable team that could work through any issues, but I say nay. Nay I say!

The Mario brothers were two skilled tradesman who were mystically transported to the Mushroom Kingdom just to be inundated with trials and tribulations of an unearthly degree all in an attempt to save a princess they had just met. We can assume they were benevolent guys since there is never any mention of a reward for saving said princess. That makes me think the the princess became the reward for both brothers. There is an instant set up for sibling rivalry.

If you notice, the brothers are rarely shown on screen at the same time without being pitted against each other. I can say for myself that playing Super Mario 3 with my older brother was a lesson in pain. Every time I passed by one of the levels he had beaten, he would initiate the Mario Bros. mini game and steal my lives and inventory items. A worse frustration was never known. Controllers were wielded like nunchucks, brotherly beatings happened-usually quietly so our mom didn’t make us stop playing. Craziness. I’m sure I did something equally as irritating to my younger brother through a later Mario game. My point is that the Mario brothers breed rivalry even if it is funny at times.
So I decided to paint these guys locked in a forever stare that lends us some insight to their family dynamics. Things were simpler when all they had to do was snake drains and unclog toilets.

I am currently offering these two 3D wall paintings on my Etsy! Luigi measures at about 9.25″x6.25″ while Mario is approximately 8″x7″. These guys would look great up on either side of a wall, on separate ends of a bookshelf, over a TV, etc.

These guys sold super quick but if you're interested in a custom order please contact me via my contact button above or via my Etsy shop!