Yes, I paint and illustrate cartoons too.
Every now and then, I plug in the old Nintendo. Thankfully, I’ve held on to a couple of old CRT television sets.. and as long as one has a functioning Coaxial or RCA jacks, I’m good to go like it’s nineteen-ninety-one! ..and this time, I happened to have a bunch of my art supplies out on the kitchen table. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on this one.. I was trying to keep this sketch quick and loose.
Super Mario Bros. 3 is still my ‘go-to’ video game on the NES. I can’t say enough about how great this game is and rightfully, how popular the franchise became in the early 90’s. The toys were junk and the spin-offs were horrible.. horrible good! Anyone remember the Super Mario Brothers Super Show? It’s probably on Netflix.
I thought the game’s UI was particularly exciting. An animated, top-down map of a cartoon world.. with the BEST music to be found on any 80’s, 8-Bit console. Clearly the real inspiration for Google Earth, and maybe why I have such an obsession with maps and cartography ..and mycology, lol.
Come to think of it, this game may have had way more influence on my tastes than I realized. Throughout elementary school, no homework session or assignment seemed complete without a little Koopa Troopa or Power-Up mushroom doodle in the margin.
I guess I’ll have to pullout some of the old issues of Nintendo Power Magazine I have squirrelled away somewhere in the crawlspace, hahaha.
– Aaron