Super Mario Brothers (Process)

So I thought for the first week I'd post some of the projects I've already finished and talk just a little bit about the process. This first one is an illustration of everybody's favorite plumber brothers... Mario and Luigi. It came from this sketch I drew back in 07 that I found I had scanned into my computer.

 Since I've made the decision to finish off any project I start now (that's been a huge problem in the past), I decided to see what I could make out of it. The second step after scanning a drawing in or creating it in the computer with Sketchbook Pro (highly recommended program) is to bring it into Flash. You wouldn't think flash would be the program of choice for Illustration, would you? I find that I work faster in Flash over Illustrator and like the way can "organically" push and pull on lines and edges of shapes with the pointer tool rather than mess with anchor points and such in Adobe Illustrator. If I need precise curves, I'd use Illustrator, but for this Flash is quicker and more than adequate. I'll post some screenshots in another post as a sort of tutorial soon.

Anyway I came up with this

looking more like the dynamic duo, but not very interesting. Well I hate to skip a few steps and will try not to in the future, but after creating these flat solid color versions I export the image(s) out as a transparent png and bring it into photoshop. There I like to add shading, texture, scenery, and mess about with the colors. Taking actual photography and blending it into the scene to give it just a tiny bit more pop.

here:

You'll notice that the grass is from a real photograph, the dirt, and the pipe as well. That's not all. It may be hard to see, but I also often like to add texture wherever I can.. whether it's immediately noticeable or not. The hats and shirts have cotton textures on them... subtle but they are there. The boots have leather texture, and even the skin... if you were to zoom in you'd see faint pores from a skin texture I put on them.

It's not the best illustration in the sense that there is no real concept behind it. But I like how it turned out. I probably could have added way more from the mario world. Yoshi perhaps?

Anyway I'll go into better detail in following posts. This was just a basic rundown to give you some background on my process and to get me used to posting. I'll try and be a little less wordy next time. My first follower knows I can ramble on and on sometimes ;)