Miiverse Art - A Bumpy Ride

Annnnd... back to the frivolity of the Miiverse. :)

Another note about GDC, I had to keep my Miiverse enthusiasm in check as I made my way across Nintendo's booth in the Expo Hall and saw the brand new Luigi community on display there. If I had more time, maybe I would have posted something there right on the show floor, heh. As it is, I haven't really had a chance to draw anything new in Miiverse since early March, I believe. I've just been too busy getting ready for, then subsequently attending GDC, and now I'm trying to play catch up at both of my jobs. Soon, though, I hope. Fortunately, I still have lots of older Miiverse art to post!

Let us go back to late November, when Mario and Luigi hitched a ride on a giant Wiggler to make their way through a lake of toxic soda. Good times. Back to the stylized mini Mario and Luigi for this one. I had a lot of fun drawing Wiggler here. :)

Miiverse Art - Looking the Wrong Way

The Van Gogh-inspired background in Painted Swampland makes for one of the prettiest levels in the game. While I wouldn't exactly say this Miivers sketch looks too much like Van Gogh's work, I did want to go for something a bit looser and sketchier to better fit the feel of the level. Boos are pretty simple to draw, but a lot of fun, and we were frequently finding ourselves surrounded by them. :)

Miiverse Art - The Delicious Dead

I figured this might be a good one to post with this week's release of Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon. I imagine that Luigi is a big fan of the ghost-eating Yellow Baby Yoshis. :)

Miiverse Art - Giant Goombas and Secret Exits

As I'm sure you can tell by the simplicity of these pictures, I was a bit eager to get back to playing the game during this particular session. Still, I didn't want to skip over the option to draw entirely. I was a big fan of the Giant Land in Super Mario Bros. 3 and was really happy to see the giant enemies and environments make a comeback, if only briefly. For Bridge over Poisoned Waters, I wanted to leave other players a tip for finding the secret exit... without giving it away completely.

Miiverse Art - Surrounded

I believe this is the second picture I tried in the style of the Haunted Shipwreck post. This was a pretty neat level that had just the right level of tension to keep us on our toes along with a memorable starring enemy that made for a nice composition. I think at the time I drew this, it was my most popular Miiverse picture, as well. I think this was also the first picture with a Mario enemy I'd never drawn before attempting a Miiverse drawing of it. Dragoneel has a fun design!

Miiverse Art - An Exercise in Futility

One of the advantages of playing NSMBU with two people is that it gives you the freedom to jump to your death multiple times without necessarily having to start over from the beginning of the stage or last checkpoint. This is useful when searching for hidden Star Coins and secret exits. At some point, though, common sense is supposed to kick in where you realize you're probably not supposed to be able to make that jump without a Flying Squirrel Suit.

Many lives were lost, Yoshis were sacrificed, and flying Cheep Cheeps picked at our bones victoriously. We eventually made it to the pipe, sure, but I'm pretty sure we made it a lot harder than it needed to be.

After finishing this level, I wasn't in much of a drawing mood (as you can probably tell from the simplicity of the image), but I felt this was an epic failure that needed to be documented.

Miiverse Art - You Distract Him

This picture marked something of a turning point in my NSMBU Miiverse art. I would continue to do little gag pictures, but this was the first one where I really tried to capture my personal experience of playing through the level. As I mentioned before, I played through the entire game with my boyfriend with him playing as Mario and me playing as Luigi (I've been a big fan of Luigi since I was a kid, so I insist on playing him whenever possible). While we were trying to get the first(?) Star Coin in the Haunted Shipwreck level, followed closely behind by Boos, I played decoy to distract a Boo while Mario went after the Star Coin below. It amused me since Luigi is known for his fear of ghosts, and it painted a cute image in my mind, which I've hopefully carried over into pixels.

I also developed a new cartoony style for Mario and Luigi in this one that I'd use in a few other pictures going forward. It was intended to be something I could draw relatively quickly but still express some emotion. The short stature of the characters, in addition to making them look kind of cute, was intended to help them better fit within the narrow drawing area on the GamePad. I tried to work quickly on this one while still adding in a rough idea of a background and multiple characters, but the drawings were starting to take a bit longer...

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. :)