Miiverse Art - Morton's Advice

So, this started out as a pretty epic picture of Morton.

It was not to be.

This was the first of many Miiverse drawings that would be lost. When prompted to post at the end of the level, we would usually just put our Wii Remotes down on the couch as I was drawing, but accidently nudge it the wrong way, and you can back out of the picture, erasing it without warning. Honestly, I would be pretty lucky that I had only lost 20 minutes on this one. On some of the later ones, I would lose hours. Eventually, we learned to put the Wii Remotes out of reach of both ourselves and the cat until the drawing was finished.

Miiverse Art - Plant Eggs?

In the level "Blooming Lakitus," apparently Lakitu has been experimenting with botany, as he leaves his traditional Spiny eggs behind in favor of Pirahna Plant "eggs" that spawn a Pirahna Plant when hitting the ground. This is around when I started trying to put more effort into level-prompted pictures while still keeping them fairly quick.

Miiverse Art - Mario & Yoshi, Now and Then

This is the first piece of Miiverse art that I actually spent a considerable amount of time on, as well as the first I did for the hell of it and not because the game prompted me to draw something (notice the lack of level tags).

I believe it was right around Thanksgiving, and I had a little more time than usual since I had been in a car accident a few weeks before and was still unable to drive, so I'd been working from home. Work was dead because of the upcoming holiday, so I passed time between calls working on this picture. I think it probably took me about four hours or so, on and off.

Anyway, this was my first time trying to achieve fine details and the only time I've attempted trying to recreate existing artwork rather than doing an original interpretation of these characters. But obviously New Super Mario Bros. U owes a lot to Super Mario World, and the cover art for the two games really shows how both Mario and Yoshi have evolved over the past two decades, so I wanted to draw attention to that. I started to develop some Wii U drawing techniques while working on this picture that would carry over to later pictures.



Because of the length of time I worked on this picture and the fear of possibly losing it before I was able to post it, this is the first time I photographed the drawing as I was working on it, so I can share a bit of the process with you today...

Miiverse Art - Crushing Walls and Spiky Vomit

Here are a couple more that were also done on 11/20/12 (the photo is from a couple of days after they were drawn). For those not familiar with New Super Mario Bros. U, the green tags above the pictures are the level names. If they appear, it means that the game prompted me to write/draw something after completing that level and meeting a certain requirement (in most cases for me, that would have been getting all three star coins in one shot). So, there wouldn't be pictures for each level since I didn't always meet a requirement when finishing it (and even some of the times when I was prompted, I didn't draw anything because I was tired or just wanted to move on to the next level). In the beginning, I tried to make the drawings quick, because I played through the entire game with my boyfriend (he was Mario, I was Luigi), and I didn't want to make him wait too long. That would change as time went on, though...

Miiverse Art - Ball Pit!!!

This wasn't the first thing I posted to Miiverse, but it's probably the first one that I put even a remote bit of effort into. This was originally posted on 11/20/12, a couple of days after the Wii U launched in North America. Lemmy is the boss of the first castle in New Super Mario Bros. U. He was always my favorite Koopaling.

Sketching and Video Games: Why I Love Miiverse

It's been a while. I more or less finished the art for the game that I had been working on last year and started on another. Neither have been released yet, but there should be more on that later.

So, most of my art over the past... who knows how long... has been project-related and not something I've been able to share. Working two jobs means that free time is slim at best. I've had very little time to devote to two of my favorite hobbies: sketching and video games. And it makes me sad.

Being the busy person that I am, I'm all for multitasking. And being the big Mario fan that I am, I was intent on making time for the newest Mario game to hit shelves, New Super Mario Bros. U. To be honest, I've had more of a casual relationship with most of the New Super Mario Bros. series. As a kid, I was hardcore into the NES and SNES games. Hell, they're what made me want to get into game development. I enjoyed the 3D games in the series, and I still think that Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 are some of the best ever created, linking the freedom of 3D movement with the tight level design of classics like Super Mario Bros. 3. The New Super Mario Bros. games on handhelds were certainly enjoyable, but I wasn't really sure if they held up to the high standard of the rest of the series. I really enjoyed the more social aspect of playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii with my boyfriend, though, and I figured New Super Mario Bros. U would be more of the same.

What I didn't expect was for it to make me fall in love with Miiverse.

For the uninitiated, Miiverse is Nintendo's online community on the Wii U (with future plans to expand to the 3DS and beyond). In Nintendo fashion, it strives to be family friendly and inviting to all players (in other words, heavily moderated to keep it from becoming Xbox Live). Each player is represented by their Mii and can contribute to online communities (inside or outside of the games they represent) by either typing up short (100 characters or less) messages or writing/drawing something by hand. The Wii U's selling point is its tablet/controller hybrid, the Wii U GamePad, so the touchscreen interface makes this form of communication very easy.

I was interested in Miiverse when it was first announced, but at that point I had no idea how much of an impact it would have on me playing games on the Wii U. Of the few Wii U games I currently have, Mario integrates it the best. As you play through each level, the game regularly asks you for your feedback. You may be prompted if you accomplish something impressive in a level (getting through without taking damage, collecting all the star coins in one shot, finishing in under a certain time limit) or if you're having a rough time and keep dying over and over. The images are then displayed to other players (both your friends and random strangers) on the game's map screen (or occasionally just pop up when you die a certain number of times on one level... from other people who did the same). When I played through the first few stages, I took the suggestions the game gave me pretty literally (describe the level in two words, write a message to your future self, give Bowser a warning), but soon I decided I'd have more fun if I just drew a picture that would be like an amusing snapshot of that particular level. Sometimes it was based on the level's enemies or environment, and sometimes it would be a reflection of the antics that my boyfriend and I subjected each other to while playing through the stage.

The game really tapped into my love of drawing Mario characters as a child, and I had a blast. At first, I tried to keep the pictures quick and simple so that my boyfriend wasn't waiting forever to play the next stage, but eventually he gave in and just alternated between Mario and whatever he was playing on 3DS or Vita, as I could sometimes spend an hour or more on a picture.

Over the past couple of months, this has been a preferred use of my limited free time, as it integrates video games and drawing so seamlessly and lets me get a taste of both. The limited nature of the Miiverse canvas (purely black and white, set image size and orientation) provides a nice challenge and also forces me to create a finished product in a relatively short period of time (no saving!). The fact that the images can be viewed by the rest of the Miiverse community adds a little pressure to push myself to try to do something that I can be proud of instead of a really lazy sketch. As a result, I've ended up with nearly 50 little drawings at this point that have given me a nice break from the projects I've been working on. It actually feels similar to the daily drawings I was doing a while back... just more Nintendo themed. :)

Since it's been requested by a couple of friends, I'll start to post some of my favorites up on this blog. I hope you enjoy. :)