The last few weeks, I’ve been living up my childhood nostalgia quite a bit. For the last few projects for my Color Dynamics class, I decided to use classic Nintendo/videogame characters for my assignments.

Assignment: Anomaly and Bridge Tones

Part 1: Create 3-like compositions, using a tightly unified color field. e.g. complementary tones, analogous or monochromatic tones, limited value range.

Part 3: Change two of the existing colors to create bridge tones that will soften the starkness of the anomaly.

I wanted to do something simple, since I had to do 3 iterations of the same composition. What better to do than a tribute to the Super Mushroom?

Here’s what I came up with:

Final Product: Mario Mushrooms

Alllrriiiggght, so I didn’t really follow the assignment! I added a bunch of white to the bridge tones for fear of the mushroom looking too toxic! I changed the golden yellow sun streaks in the background to a yellow-greenish tone (but with LOTS of white), and the mushroom spots from red to a very slight purple (tho it looks blue next to the blue mushroom base color).

I had a LOT of fun working on this project! I might go back and redo the same composition with more popular Mario mushroom colors: the new super mushroom (red base, white spots), the 1-up (neon green base, white spots)

Assignment: Proportional Inventory Study

Part 1: Make a proportional inventory of an image that has an easily countable number of tones.

Part 2: Create a composition of your own using the colors and proportions of the inventory.

This is my FAVORITE piece at the moment!
For Part 1, a few days earlier, I had stumbled upon this image by strongstuff

Optimus Prime Commission by strongstuff

I just thought this Optimus Prime image was AMAZING: blocky style, and minimal colors used to denote the curves and shadows around Optimus’ form. I decided to use this piece for my study.

Here is my Proportional Inventory, breaking down the proportions of how many colors there are in the Optimus Prime piece, and also how MUCH of it exists in the piece all together. (Ex: 20% white, 5% light gray, etc.)

NOTE: Depending on your computer monitor’s settings, the colors might not match. My desktop monitor’s colors are all kinds of whack so I used to my new laptop to view the Optimus Prime pic. From there, I spent a while mixing the colors on my palette until it matched closely the colors on my laptop screen.

Then came the fun part!! I needed to figure out what Nintendo character was mostly blue and red… At first thought, of course I thought of Mario! But I had a few problems: Mario is mostly red with blue overalls, plus he has skin tones, which was not part of the Optimus Prime color inventory! I texted Norvelle, Brent, and Greg in class and we came up with a few options: Mario, Yoshis, Sonic(!!). As much as I wanted to do a piece on Sonic <3 <3 <3, I realized that I could do something with Megaman. Megaman has very minimal skin so it would be a nice experiment!

But what could off-set Megaman’s mostly blue body with red?

Here’s what I came up with ;)

Final product: Megaman+Protoman

Protoman’s red base served as a perfect balance for Megaman’s blue. Being Megaman’s brother, I found it appropriate to do a split down the middle between the two. The ultimate battle between Good and Evil!

Result? Bubbling New Ideas For Future Pieces!

After I started taking on the assignments with subjects that were more of my style (illustrations, more graphic/character-based), I concentrated and spent more time working on my pieces. I noticed that I enjoyed it x100 more doing fan art! Soooo…

My new project will be to create a series of classic videogame fan art!

Have any ideas or requests? Please comment and let me know what characters or game you would like to see!

Oh, and if I’m not already familiar with the game, I promise to play it to learn the ridiculous intricacies of it. (ex: Ninja Gaiden’s CHEATER birds. BULL.SHIT.)