CRAFT UNIQUE MARIO FAN ART WITH A TEAM

Pejman Rajabi explains how his crew of expert artists put their own twist on a classic video game character

- Pejman Rajabi

After seeing the trailer for The Super Mario Bros. Movie that released last year, I decided to make my own rendition of a character that was synonymous with the childhood of so many people. I have lots of fond memories playing the Mario games as a child myself, and thought it would be cool to make him in my own style. A lot of us got into gaming through Mario, and the games bring back all kinds of nostalgic memories.

At the beginning, I decided to create this artwork with a team, so I invited my friends to contribute their own strengths to the project. I thoroughly enjoyed making this take on Mario, which was one of the best creative experiences of my life, working with such an amazing artistic crew.

01 INITIAL 2D CONCEPT

This artwork was based on a concept from my friend Pedram Jamadi, a visual development artist who has worked on concept designs for characters and more across video games, films and animation for a decade. His original artwork was made for a character design challenge. Part of his take on the character was to make additions not commonly associated with Mario, such as the babies. He also used a colour key for the characters and photobashed the background.

02 MODELLING THE CHARACTER IN 3D

The modelling work was done by Ehsan Nouri. He’s a 3D character artist skilled in creating captivating and stylised figures for animation, films and VR, and is an expert in anatomy aesthetics and storytelling.