Link - SotD 138

A small break from mario today, but not from nintendo characters. I'm actually more of a Zelda fan myself. A really crappy fan. I'm incredibly loyal to the series, but I've never completed the big ones. The only one I think I've seen to the end was the very first on the NES. And that one still remains my favorite in the series. I feel pretty alone in that opinion, but I really did enjoy that one the most... and now it's so steeped in nostalgia, no other Zelda can measure up to it in my book.

I put together this Link a bit ago in the vein of the mario redesigns. I don't love it and I want to eventually take a wack at an actual zelda illustration. Something I can hang up on my wall... hopefully that's not too vain sounding...

Goomba - SotD 137

A classic Mario enemy. No mario game would be complete without them. To be fair though, if they skittered like little spider mushrooms, like I've depicted here? I'd never play it.

I've had an issue with a lot of these in the design process... little ball-like feet don't really translate to how I'm doing these, and I'm trying to find way around the issue. So far the solution seems to be insect like legs. You can stick them on anything. Looks awesome.

Pokey - SotD 136

Another Mario enemy. Been working pretty steadily so I do have some variety on the horizon, but it's time to paint out another batch of these guys. Got some more popular ones planned.

Bob-omb - SotD 135

Was really looking forward to doing this one even though I wasn't sure how I was going to adapt it for a long while. Definitely one of my favorites so far.

I finally watched Suckerpunch last night, and got this totally unexpected emotion when I watched it: I got so angry. And that emotion sort of blindsided me. I'd heard some of the reviews, which were horrible (22% on rotten tomatoes) but I still had some high hopes for some good illustrator porn in a way. Let me define that real quick: Anything that illustrators would love to illustrate and work on for fun e.g. Steampunk WW1 concepts. I hadn't considered that the story and tone would be so colossally horrible... so wrongly wedged into the film, that it could sully the very fiber of my favorite things. Things to know about me: I love astronauts, robots, war history, alternate universes, and snow. So when this film took all that, except for astonauts, thank goodness, mixed it all up into this gruel and I sat down and took the first taste I only felt the same sort of emotional reaction you get when you are horribly offended. It was like "How dare you!?" Zack Snyder, to ever take all these wonderful things and disrespect them with this, this... THING. This script, if I dare call it that.

It is just baffling to me that I walked away from Suckerpunch not utterly loving it. I just can't believe he managed to mess that up. So I sat there, with my flag at half mast... because after seeing what he had attached all the wonderful art assets to, those artists had to have gone and jumped off buildings. What a waste of talent.

Whomp King - SotD 134

The Whomp King, I'll admit, made me so nervous in mario 64. Have what seems to be another fan favorite coming tommorrow...

Complete side tangent here: I need to quit under estimating toast. I'm sitting here eating this delicious piece of toast with some jam and butter on it, and it's just never that food I wake up and want. It's the last resort, the lazy choice, or there isn't anything else to eat. Every single time though, it is so good. Cereal is sort of the same way, but only at night. I can't be alone in thinking that breakfast food feels absolutely wrong late at night, like you sort of pass that 10 o'clock mark and all that food goes from tasty to disgusting. Just this abhorred nightmare situation. Cereal though, it gets the lazy late night treatment that toast gets, and I swear it tastes better at three in the morning. Of course I usually skip breakfast... I sort of see it as a reward most of the time or an experience. Like if I can't get eggs over easy, some slightly burnt bacon and some hashbrowns at a diner... why I'm a bothering? 

In conclusion: toast is good, cereal is good, and I apparently have "up in space" expectations of breakfast food and I'm a bit of a snob about it.

Edit: forgot to change the subject title.

Porcu-Puffer - SotD 133

This particular mario enemy I feel like was the bane of many childhoods. Everyone knows that one stage in Super Mario World where you had to jump from dolphin to dolphin, as the porcu-puffer here patrolled under the surface of the water.

This one has been the quickest somehow... even though it's the most detailed. So irritated I forgot to hit record on the stream for this one.

Czar Dragon - SotD 132

The Czar Dragon may not be the most familiar of Mario characters as he was only featured in Mario RPG on the SNES. The story to this one is, it started out as Blargg, but as he turned more dragon-like it no longer fit, and I'll have to come back to Blargg some other time. So I took the Czar Dragon notion and ran with it.

I streamed a bob-omb painting last night and I just want to thank the people who watched because I was pretty tired and it wasn't the most exciting cast. But he'll be posted later this week.