HIPSTER MARIO

Commissions, perhaps in their nature have never being fun, it’s like doing the dishes, it just takes the fun arty aspect out of it. So when I was briefed in by Mike from Retroviral, he basically let me loose to do whatever I wanted, I pitched an idea and we refined it. The idea however, had to represent 7 years of Retro’s success, but how I did that was completely up to me, so I picked Mario as a vessel to deliver all of that jazz, as he is easily the most iconic video game character.

My initial sketches were exactly what I pitched, but it’s not often that I get this much freedom with a commission, so I switched the style completely by referencing one of my favourite artists,T-wei, I studied his work briefly a year or two ago when I was exploring different art styles.

In many ways, this was a breath of fresh air. Drawing often becomes a routine, where you don’t stop just to appreciate your work, to just marvel at your line art, the colouring, just those little magic details only you would notice.

I would have loved to work on it a bit more but at some point you just need to call it finished, and luckily for me it was a home run.

Read up more on Retro and their seven years of success here, or visit their site Retroviral.co.za