Paper Mario animations

[Kosheh]

By the way, as a Mario Expert (Certified)

This doesn't sound like a particularly hard certification to get among the userbase of this forum... :/

[Koopaul]

Is that a challenge? *devilishgrin*

EDIT: Hm. Now that I think about it, on the internet you can just look up anything. There's no way I can prove how knowledgable I am nor a reason to.

However, I could argue that I "get" Mario. That I have a deep understanding of its style and spirit.

[Kosheh]

Is that a challenge? *devilishgrin*

Maybe?

Does anyone else remember the time that guy posted a long fanfiction about Nintendo characters playing football?

Rewriting those characters was actually kinda fun. :V



That aside, I'm pretty sure keeping characters in-character is a fundamental pillar of writing good fanfiction etc. in the first place, lol. Your statement just kinda came off like way-super-cocky for something pretty narrow is all. Like "I could write all sorts of fanfiction OK, but I'm all about that MARIO universe. I could write the hell out of some plumbers right now".
:/

[Koopaul]

Well I was always told that if you want to get a job you got to sound confident. Sell yourself so that they know you're the one to pick, not the others. So that's where that cockiness comes from.

But it is somewhat true that 90% of fanfics I read get Mario characters wrong. But it's not that surprising. They tend to have pretty fluid personalities. Sometimes the games themselves will have them act out of character.

[E-Man]

Thanks for reviving this. I love what you are doing! By the way, as a Mario Expert (Certified) and former fanfiction writer I'd like to help out in any way I can.

Writing and storyboarding.

Also dialogue. I see so many Mario fan comics/videos/fanfiction where the dialogue reads nothing like what any of the characters would say in a Mario RPG. Maybe I'm just fussy...

Ahem. Anyway, yeah just tell me what I can do.

Thanks for the offer. I may actually take you up on that one, too. While I am a good writer, I wouldn't mind any help in that department. Also, if you can help with the storyboard process, that'll be great!

I gotta warn you, though. I actually have an unusual way of dealing with my video game canon. While I try to keep it as close to the games as possible, I often sprinkle a few of my own ideas in there, which are probably a bit outrageous to everyone else. I'm not implying that I'll make Peach a drunk or give everyone a gun in the Mushroom Kingdom, but my ideas are more like how the stork system is actually a delivery system used by hospitals that specialize in birth (and that's one of the less outrageous examples).

By the way, if you're looking for additional ways to help, I'm looking for video editors, sound and music experts, and (most importantly) voice actors. I'll be pleased if you have any expertise in those areas, but all the same, it'll be great to have a "certified" Mario Expert on the team! XD

(koopa bros. episode pls. just an entire animation with the koopa bros and the entire internet will thank you)

I was actually going to put those guys in at some point, but since you insist, they'll be the next characters I'll work on alongside Luigi. They should be a lot of fun to work with and I guarantee that they won't die in some explosion of pure energy that wipes out all of Yoshi's Island.


Anyway, I better post the new content before I ramble on too much.




This one is an animated test of the panicked feet in action. I actually did this before the initial coloring phase, so please excuse the sketchiness of the feet.

The hardest part about coloring this set was trying to get the mouth states to seamlessly merge with the head. I spent a lot of time and layers to get them to look just right. See anything you want me to change before I move into making some of the more static poses (i.e. winding up the hammer) and create some the the hand poses?


Now, before I go…



BLEH!

[E-Man]

Before I move on with the hands, I was actually talking to Virt about the outlines for them since Neweegee mentioned something about them. Neweegee said that they need to have a darker outline, while Virt said they need less saturation (and maybe do the same thing for the hammer). Here's what I came up with.



Are there any new options you guys like, or can I just stick to the originals (or something close to them)? By the way, options two and three of the hammer and option five for the gloves are basically what they would like like with all their situation taken away (even though I did keep the same hue shifted "black" for the hammer for option three). These are the most extreme cases and I would rather not resort to these.

[TheShyGuy]

No need to delay yourself with feedback. You should just go ahead and do what you feel is best. When people want to give some feedback, then they'll probably speak up.

[E-Man]

You're right, Shy Guy. It's a little silly to halt progress due to uncertainties. Besides, as Virt once said to me, I have the right to disagree with other people's criticism. Speaking of which, though, as much as Neweegee and Virt are not going to like it, I'm going to stick with the hands with the non-saturated outline and original shading. Even though you guys gave me good reasons as to why I should try it the other way, I'm not a fan of using anything that is close to greyscale and I feel that using the shading as it is in example 3 makes the hand look flat. Of course, I do like how I desaturated the hammer in example 1, so I will be using that.

Anyway, more progress, guys! I know I could simply replicate these poses once I finally animate Mario, but I created these for the purpose of distorting them, such as when Mario winds his hammer up for a big swing.



Also, here are the hand sketches I'll ink later today.

[E-Man]

I've got some great news, guys! All the parts I could possibly need for Paper Mario right now are finally completed!



Since I have plans on submitting this sheet to the Spriters Resource, I added the credit tag you see you the corner down there. If you notice anything I need to change as soon as possible, just let me know. By the way, in case you're wondering why there's so much blank space on this, the reason is that I formatted this to easily plug into Maya without too many problems. If parts get too close together, then it would result in unneeded appearances of little pieces of different parts showing up on a plane reserved for one part only. Also, I had to make this sheet a perfect square to translate better onto a 0-1 space. Please forgive me for those bits. If it'll be too much of a problem, then I'll create a separate layout that is a bit more friendly for the main site.

Anyway, now that this is over with more or less, all I need to do is rig up Mario before he's ready for animation. 

[Virt]

The resizing on Mario's torso in his ducking sprite looks odd, particularly on the buttons. Also, his pointing finger on the 3 sprites on the bottom left looks really long and freaky.

[E-Man]

Sounds reasonable. How about this then, guys?

[Xander]

Your work is brilliant!

Love your Mario, he's probably perfect, but since you asked for feedback, the only thing that looks a tiny bit off (and this may just be me) is his ear. His ear seems to be tilting a bit (like his cheek is pushing out the bottom of his ear).

Just a thought, I might be way off! Great job.

[E-Man]

Darn it! I am sick of not updating this thread with more of my work, so here's a snapshot of the fully rigged Paper Mario.



I'm sorry it took me so long. I had Full Sail to attend to and I'm not exactly the best rigger around. Now that he's ready, all that's left is to create a test animation!

Anyway, I didn't forget about Xander's critique. Besides changing the ear's angle and size (it needs to be bigger in my opinion), the way a few of the hands are and the controls are the first things I'm going to tweak once I work on my next puppets (including Luigi and the Koopa Bros.).

[E-Man]

THIS IS IT! THE MOMENT OF TRUTH!

After working a few months on and off on this due to Full Sail, my latest Paper Mario test animation is finally complete! Working on it, though, I noticed some things that I need to change for the Mario puppet when I get around to it. Besides the fact that I made some controls choppy (I actually had to make a temporary hat rotation control for this reason), making the arms and head (and possibly the feet) have completely independence of the body is a bad idea. I spent a lot of time manually moving the pieces into roughly the right places. Next time, I should parent them onto the body. As for the other two things that bug me, I might have to make new hand poses and definitely work on the jaw. As it is now, it makes Mario's head look a little too fat.

Anyway, these are the main changes I've noticed for myself. If you have some food for thought on this, just let me know.

By the way, guys, I think I outdid myself on a project like this one. I've shown some preview playblasts of this animation when it was still in development to others through private means and the amount of praise I got was astonishing!

[E-Man]

After waiting a little bit for a reply for additional feedback, I'd thought I just update this topic anyway to talk about my future plans.

Besides publicly posting my second test video on the forum, I actually showed it to some people over Skype. I got a lot of praise for it, but I did get a reasonable critique for it. Basically, when Mario is preforming the triple jump, the timing, rotation, and arcs are off. While I can understand the problem with the arcs (they are not completely rounded, which you can see clearly when Mario lands the last jump), I'm not entirely sure about the other ones. My guesses are that the timing might be a little slow and some of the objects move at the same rate. In spite of that, there's no point of changing the test now since it more or less served its purpose. Instead, I'm more interested in seeing what went wrong about it and applying those corrections to future projects.

When I was working on the second test, I was mostly showing my progress privately because I wanted to make the final results a surprise. Now that I got that out of the way, I really have no need to keep my progress playblasts to myself. This works very well with what I described before about the triple jump because you guys will be able to look at my animation progress and point out any mistakes I overlooked.

Now, since I don't want to keep posting videos on an account that was originally mean for original works anyway, I have plans to create a new YouTube channel for video game-based works: E-ManAnimates. I even made an avatar for the channel.

Note: Image is big due to YouTube's avatar dimensions.

I like how it overall looks, but it feels like it lacks a lot of punch. I'm sure you guys have different suggestions, but what bothers me is that it's nothing more than a bunch of simple gradients I cooked up in Adobe Fireworks. As much as I would do a better job with this myself, I honestly don't know how to shade and apply highlights to flat pieces of metal in a convincing way. I almost considered applying a bevel to it, but the avatar already looks really cheap as it is.


Now then, let's talk about what I plan to work on next. As much as it makes sense to start my Paper Mario series now, I don't exactly have all the resources needed to produce the first few episodes to their best quality. Instead, like I probably mentioned before, I want to start things out with a short starring the Koopa Bros. Ever since their defeat in the first Paper Mario games, Bowser hasn't bothered with them too much anymore. Now, they have to try something big in order to grab his attention again. I don't imagine this requiring that many outside talents, but I'd like to have at least one additional voice actor if I have characters (especially for the other Koopa Bros.). Besides the matter of music and refining the script (and possibly some video editing skills on an adequate level), I also need help determining what the personalities of the Koopa Bros. should be.

Red - I already have him covered. As the leader, I'll make him the most balanced in terms of physical and mental powers. Even though he does have a good head on his shoulders, he does get cocky and tends to rush into things carelessly. I'll be voicing him in a smooth talking way similar to Axel of the Kingdom Hearts games.

Black - I'm thinking of making him one who does not talk too often, but he is the toughest on the team. Also, he's the most levelheaded.

Yellow - I might make him the technical one on he team that always builds traps and maybe other gadgets.

Green - The team idiot I guess? It's probably better if he turns out to a lot smarter than he talks and acts, but when he comes up with something extremely intelligent, the others brush him off. Brain's relationship with Pinky from a certain animated series comes to mind.


If you guys want to voice any o=of these characters and/or give me other suggestions, please let me know.