Winged Mushroom
On the design process
The Mario franchise came about in 1985, but Mario as a character was invented in 1981 by Shigeru Miyamoto, as a carpenter named Jumpman. He first appeared in a game called Donkey Kong which came out in 1981 but he later got his own game in 1985 along with his brother Luigi. The game was set in the New York sewers and it was decided then that he would be a plumber instead of a carpenter. His main purpose in the games has mostly been to save Princess toadstool (later renamed Princess Peach) from the King Koopa or Bowser.
For my first idea I thought about the mushrooms that are a big part of most of the games. I then realised that there were not many objects or power ups that could give you flight, save from the Super Leaf which transforms Mario into a tanooki (a racoon like creature) and allows him to glide. So I decided that I would make a flight mushroom. The mushroom only allows you to fly up and forward, but you are also invincible for the duration of the power up which is 10 seconds. If the effect runs out when you are in the air you will glide slowly to the ground.
For my second idea I looked at the Super Leaf. The Super Leaf turns Mario into a tanooki which gives him the ability to glide slowly down after jumping normally or off platforms. There is also an invincibility leaf with the same power up as the Super Leaf, but with invincibility added in. What I wanted to do with it was to create a de-buff with the shape of a leaf. This leaf slows Mario’s normal speed by half, but it also makes him unable to kill any enemies for the duration of the de-buff, which is 20 seconds.
For the design I decided to take away the legs because it is a prop so it does not need to move. On their backs Bob Omb’s have a wind up key, which I quite liked, so I kept it and experimented with it to see what I could do make it more original. In the end I gave it a heart shaped winder, which relates to the healing factor it has. I then experimented with a few patterns which included hearts and first aid crosses. I first tried them in a band around the top of the prop, but I decided to make them larger and only one in the centre of the face. I ended up choosing the large heart on the centre of the face because that would match with the winder. I then tried adding a plaster out of curiosity, but realised that it looked really out of place, so I decided to leave it out. I then experimented with colours which were related to first aid or healing. I quite like the green heart on a white base but I decided on a red heart and a white base.
I then went on to create the design in the program 3Ds MAX. I used a chamfer box for the base of the mushroom. I then created a sphere and used the “hemisphere” option to cut the sphere in half to create the cap of the mushroom. I then rotated the cap and moved it so that it would sit on the base comfortably. I then moved on to create the wings. I used the 2D shape Egg and I then extruded it to realise that I had created a hollow shape, with only the outline being 3D. I had to redo the wigs so I used the egg shape again, and instead of taking the second part to the outside of the shape, I kept the second shape in the centre. I then extruded the egg and found that the whole egg had been extruded. I then cloned the shape twice and aligned them below the first shape. Rotating them so they would look more like a wing. I also changed the colours to a lighter shade of grey then a darker shade of grey to make shadows. I grouped that together, then cloned the whole shape and scaled it smaller to put into the centre of the wing. I then cloned the whole shape again and mirrored it, placing it on the opposite side of the cap. I then made the text and bent it around the curve of the cap, then extruded it so that it would fit better.
For the design I decided that it should have the same shape but have a different pattern. After experimenting with a few different patterns, I decided on a vertical zig-zag pattern, which is similar enough to the original pattern to look right but it is not indistinguishable from it. I then wanted to change the face to make it more obvious that it is a de-buff, so I tried giving it angry eyebrows which I think look good. I then tried adding a mouth but it made it look like it would not belong in the Mario universe. I then went on to experiment with colours. The Super Leaf seems to have a “two shades of the same colour” colour scheme so I wanted to stick within that, but I did want to see what it would look like with two different colours so I tried that. In the end I decided that I would go for the purple colour scheme because it suited the leaf the best in my opinion.
For my third idea I looked at Bob Omb, which is an enemy in the Mario franchise which is designed like a bomb. However I quite liked the design and so I designed a prop that looks similar to the Bob Omb. This prop Bob Omb activates when Mario dies, and revives him in the same spot without having to restart the level which is normal in the Mario games. The Bob Omb would hop out of his pocket and blow up next to him, showering him with the health potion inside it, healing him in the process and reviving him where he died.
For the design I decided to take away the legs because it is a prop so it does not need to move. On their backs Bob Omb’s have a wind up key, which I quite liked, so I kept it and experimented with it to see what I could do make it more original. In the end I gave it a heart shaped winder, which relates to the healing factor it has. I then experimented with a few patterns which included hearts and first aid crosses. I first tried them in a band around the top of the prop, but I decided to make them larger and only one in the centre of the face. I ended up choosing the large heart on the centre of the face because that would match with the winder. I then tried adding a plaster out of curiosity, but realised that it looked really out of place, so I decided to leave it out. I then experimented with colours which were related to first aid or healing. I quite like the green heart on a white base but I decided on a red heart and a white base.
I think out of all of my ideas, the winged mushroom is the best because the shape is simple enough to create but also visually interesting because of the wings. However, I also quite like the Revive Bob Omb, because the design is quite nice and the purpose of the prop makes a lot of sense in the context of Mario games: There is not a prop like that yet in the game series. I also think that the Bob Omb is the most useful within the game and it has an interesting shape.
For the design I made a winged mushroom to be a part of the game super Mario. I started out by looking at the objects in Mario, such as mushrooms, leafs and the character Bob-ohm. I decided that I quite liked the mushroom and I wondered what it would look like with wings.
I started the design with the wings. I wanted to keep in with the aesthetic of the game, so I looked at a character which has wings on its back, and decided to copy the style of the wings. I did experiment with other shapes, but I decided that I liked the “Mario style” wings best. I then went on to decide what would go on the cap of the mushroom to make it more interesting. I decided on a word, and I wanted the word to be related to flight. I chose the word Wings, and I chose to write it in katakana, a Japanese alphabet, so that it could link back to where Mario came from and so that young children from Japan would be able to read it, since it is a child’s game. I decided on colours by experimenting with both warm and cold colours, and I decided that I liked the blue colours I had been experimenting with.
When I asked some people to do the questionnaire, one person thought that the bottom of the cap could be a little more rounded to fit in more with the aesthetic of the game. Another person thought that the colours could be a little brighter so that it would fit in with the game better. Other than that the results of the questionnaire were all good.
In conclusion, I learned a lot about using 3Ds Max and how a lot of the tools can be used to help make the model look better. I learned about how to research a subject properly, which will allow me to research other subjects better in the future.
Bibliography
Comments
Post a Comment