New Power-Up [JULY]

Pokemon: Foongus
Difficulty: Medium

[On DeviantArt] - If you're not a Curator but you've got a comment.

Theme: There's plenty of all three colors here.

 

I'm going to claim thiiissss~ ( first curation yay~ I was just approved :> )

 

Alright, Curation is a go~!

First Impression:

Alright, let me first start off with my first impression of this piece. Now I’m a HUGE nintendo fan so naturally something like this got me giddy. There’s Mario a little off-center in it, but obviously there and the mushroom kingdom sits in the background. This picture is neat, beautifully done, colorful and it’s totally got to be going for that Paper Mario style.

Form: Let’s take a closer look now!

So first off, let’s take a look at little Foongus here. I’m going to say, it looks good! Right away I could tell it was Foongus without needing to be told or look up its art, so you really hit that well. However, I’m going to take a closer look now. Foongus is a very simple Pokemon with two large shapes defining its body, so these are going to be the main focal points. The top part of its body or rather its cap has the right shape going, but it’s not wide enough when looking at its official art. The cap spreads out wide well past its “body” and here it appears as though its barely stretched past it. It stretches a little past the back part of the body, but in the front you can clearly see its arm stretches a bit past the length of the cap. Even if Foongus was looking up (which it does slightly), I still think the cap should be a bit wider. Moving down to the body here, the shape in general is again correct here, but as it tapers to its cap, it actually gets a bit thinner then you have here in this image. While I understand something like that may not be possible to fix (as well as the cap) due to the nature of traditional art, I wanted to at least bring these to your attention. Onto the smaller details, these are REALLY spot on. You got its arms looking really well, it’s eyes and the correct shape for the mouth, as it protrudes just a little bit from its face. Overall, Foongus looks good and had its cap been wider and it’s ‘body’ tapered in a little more it would have been perfect!

Moving on, I’ll move to the other subject matters in this piece and the next big one is Mario. His pose is pretty simple but I can totally tell he’s got his hand on his chin as he’s staring at Foongus, contemplating (if he should eat him) if he’s a new kind of never before seen mushroom! I think you’re got Mario’s simplistic Paper Mario style down to a T and if i had to be nit-picky about anything it would be that he seems a little tall and a bit more oval-like in his body shape. Here, you’ll see he’s a bit more squashed down and a bit more round then anything. Other then that, he definitely looks like the ever popular plumber! Great job!

Background/Foreground: Gotta have a place to be!

Goodness, you have no idea how much I LOVE this background. I noticed right away you not only used Mario in his Paper Mario variant but you took it a bit further and created the environment in that style and I LOVE it. I see that you’ve modeled the trees, the hills, the sky and the ground after certain areas in the Super Paper Mario game. You imitated the style of the single tree really nicely between the square shapes used to imitate bunches of leaves and the design on the tree trunks. You used the different colors to imitate shading and it works! There are a bit more squares to them in the game, but I think what you have works just fine for them. The only thing I would have changed is the width of the tree’s body between the leaves and trunk. It’s a bit thick as compared to the art, but again that’s a nitpick. I love that you added the large stripes onto the body and i see a slight shift in the colors towards the bottom left.

This style uses very few shadows, so I see you’ve kept to it. Moving on, we have the hills just behind the tree (and everything else) and those look absolutely gorgeous. You captured the designs, shape and colors of these hills wonderfully. I love it, however I’m just unsure if by the way you colored them where the light source might be coming from. But being there are no real shadows here, It’s hard to say. Atop of one of the hills sits Peach’s castle. Which looks really good itself, but with just one building in the background it fits a tiny bit empty, especially towards the right side of the picture. Adding a tree or perhaps even a toad doing something out there would have helped make it seem a bit more interesting on the right of the picture. Moving to the sky, there isn’t too much going on, but that’s fine as you have enough in the foreground, the castle, and the hills, though I think doing a light shade of white in the squares diagonally might have looked better.

The blocks above mario look really good and follow what the blocks pretty much look like in the games, so no problem there. The only other thing that throws me off is the solid brown on the bottom underneath the green (guessing grass?) under Mario’s feet. I like the shape down there, but it doesn’t fit with the image. Everything is colored so wonderfully and neat, and then there’s just this block of perfect color on the bottom. It would look so much better had that been done traditionally. It takes away from the image quite a bit here. Other then those things, overall, I really love how you’ve done the background.

Line: How clean are you?

Alright, there isn’t really much for me to say much on the line work in this image. It’s all really neat and I can clearly see where an object or subject ends and begins. There’s no guesswork throughout the image. Though if I had to be picky about any particular thing, it would be I can’t see what’s going on with Mario’s other arm that would be facing the hill. It’s not too clear, but that’s just a nit-pick.

Technique: This style…. its… glorious~!

There isn’t too much to add here that I haven’t already said. I’d mention that you captured the Paper Mario style here beautifully and I love it! You used simple shapes and kept most of the colors solid as it is in the series. I did take notice of the slight shading on Mario’s shoes and overalls, as well as shading on Foongus. It adds a tiny bit of dimension on Mario, but i think the direction it appears to be shaded is a little odd as I mentioned there doesn’t really appear to be a light source. If there was, I’m having trouble pinpointing it. Pushing the light source stuff aside, I want to say the shading looks really good on Foongus. I really like it appears to be 3-Dimensional in a 2-Dimensional world as compared to the rest of the image. You really nailed that down as well. The only thing I might have changed on Foongus here is the shape of the center circle on its cap as it looks less like a circle and more like its stretched to be an oval.

Overall: Drum-roll~

Overall, I think this is a wonderful piece and I think you did a great job at capturing the Paper Mario Style as well as the look for Foongus here. I do wish Foongus wasn’t a secondary here, but making it bigger would make it a bit ‘unrealistic’ as it’s actually a really small pokemon. My eyes did start at Mario, but then drifted to Foongus, so you definitely had my eyes trail off to the main subject of this image, despite it being a bit small. While I wish you could make the cap wider and its body taper a bit, I think what you have here is enough for little Foongus. So with that I’m awarding this piece a 45/45 which is enough for the little guy here. Great work! I hope to see more stuff from you in the future. Unfortunately, this piece does not meet the requirements for July’s monthly theme as the colors are not necessarily spread throughout the image nor does it really fit any of the theme’s. The colors are present on Mario, Foongus and then Peach’s Castle, but other then that, the majority of the piece is a mix of green’s, brown’s, a little bit of white for the cloud outlines and a blue sky. It feels a bit more of an afterthought rather then incorporating it in a meaningful way.

Foongus is Captured!