I got a lot to say about this one...

This was the most fun, satisfying, and aggravating piece of art I've ever done. I wanted to do Paper Mario fighting Rawk Hawk on a random stage with copy pasted generic enemies (and Toads...) that was it. I recently started up a new playthrough of Thousand Year Door, Rawk Hawk was always my favorite boss from the game and the entire series. His design, his demeanor, his boss fight, wonderfully designed and memorable. But as I finished Mario and R.H. grappling one other, I wanted to do more. My goal from the start with this Illustration was to mimic the art style of the games (Thousand Year Door specifically) as closely as I could. I love how they have somewhat realistic shading, then the solid line of their original colors on the edges of the characters, I wonder why they removed that detail in the later games. The characters just have solid colors and no shading in the recent P.M. games. Anyways, I started working on the background, which sadly has become quite obstructed by all the members of the audience and the props and the giant T.V. I'm realizing now that I drew so much unnecessary detail and feel like a moron. Thankfully, I saved an image of the background with nothing in it.

The background took about 3 weeks to finish If I remember correctly. I started with the stage/flooring, then the brick walls, then the top walls with that weird pattern. Finally the gate, which I just copy and pasted twice after drawing it once. You can't see them anyways lol. I just gotta give a massive Thank You to Adobe for the Eyedropper tool. Just being able to get the EXACT color from a pixel in the screenshots I took of the game, characters, etc. was essential towards my goal. I felt so accomplished after getting the background done. I suck at drawing backgrounds, therefore I hate drawing backgrounds (which is why it took so long), and prefer drawing characters. But I knew I had to buckle down for this, because this random Mario drawing was evolving into something special (at least to me) right under my nose and I didn't even know it yet. I am more than satisfied with the outcome of it, even if you can't see more than 70% of it, ugh.

While I was drawing the background, I kept thinking of the audience, the audience was a major component of Paper Mario TTYD, I initially planned on drawing a Goomba, X-Naut, and Toad and copy and paste them in the audience till it was full. I kept thinking about it, and realizing just how boring it would look, This is art, not a screenshot of the game! I then visualized the audience filled to the brim with allies, enemies, and even bosses from all across the Paper Mario series of games (Even that one we don't talk about) This would take a long time though, drawing all these characters from scratch, in new poses, just to be in an audience. This was basically my mental response to drawing the background for so long. I just wanted to get back to drawing characters again. I didn't want to crap out on the audience. I wanted to go ALL. OUT.

The audience was of course, the longest, and most tedious part of this project. It was worth all that time and effort in the end. I wanted to focus on including as many enemies and bosses as I could, because they're far more interesting and would provide a fun challenge to draw! This drawing had evolved from a simple Illustration to a straight up tribute to Paper Mario, mainly Thousand Year Door lol. If I told past Me when I started drawing this in May that it would take 2 and a half months and become your most detailed and ambitious drawing you've ever done, Past me probably would've laughed in my face and then have gotten an aneurism. As I was drawing and adding more and more characters for the audience, another challenge and the most frustrating part of this entire project emerged: characters obstructing other characters. I was running out of room, and eventually just had to continue regardless. Thankfully, a majority of the characters are still visible more or less, and cheering on. Try to find and identify all of them! Some are pretty hidden and obscured. I think I drew about 30 - 40 characters, I honestly lost count. I drew each character on their own canvas and saved them in a folder on my computer. I slowly added them into their spots, where I thought they looked best. It would have been IMPOSSIBLE for me to draw all the characters on the picture, and have them in front or behind another. Thank Adobe once again for layers.

I have so many scrapped characters I wanted to include, I wanted to include Hooktail, and Bonetail, too big. I wanted to include Tubba Blubba, once again too big. That giant brown cloud from the N64 game, Brobot, I then drew only Mr. L, Super Dimentio, I just drew Dimentio instead, I seriously planned on drawing EVERY one of Mario's partners all the way up to Origami King, Pixels, Partners, everyone. They all would've taken WAAAAYY too much time, So I just drew my personal favorite partners. I had to pay respects to Bob-Bomb (Bobby) from Origami King, So I included him on the stage. I wasn't going to have him be scrapped whatsoever. Yeah, I got a bit sad over a Bob-Bomb sacrificing himself for your journey, I don't care. I even thought of including the freaking Colored Pencils, Tape, Rubber Band, Scissors, etc. from Origami King, I just settled on Olivia and Olly instead. As you can see, I was getting too ambitious and over my head. I had to compose myself, and realize, this would take MONTHS for me to draw. I didn't have anyone help me with this. So, I chose the best, iconic bosses, enemies, and allies to include. For the Yoshi partner, I did a random number generator on the color/design to draw, I got the black one, which luckily is my favorite design out of the bunch. I planned on this, I wanted the last characters drawn to be Bowser (Come on, I can't NOT have him in the audience) and Grodus: Leader of the X-Nauts. God, I sound like such a loser right now lol. It was then until I realized the greatest Paper Mario character of all time was not included: The poderoso SOMBRERO GUY. He was my last character, and I drew him the ABSOLUTE best that I possibly could. (This is a joke, please don't take this seriously) After the audience was done, I wanted to add one more detail to the overall picture, a subtle, crumpled paper look. I did some Photoshop magic, and by that, I mean watch a six minute tutorial video on Youtube playing royalty free music on how to do it. The crumpled paper effect I did was literally last minute, I was about to upload the art before I took one last look at it and got the idea. I'm very glad I did. I based this off the flashback cutscenes in Origami King, which had a similar effect.

Overall, the audience was my most favorite as well as least favorite part of the process, I got so tired of drawing audience members multiple times, that I had to take breaks and draw other things just to become reinvigorated. I told myself I was never gonna get this done if I kept taking breaks, and soon, just worked on this full force till it was done.. tonight... at 2 in the morning. This drawing is and probably will stay my Magnum Opus. I don't know if or how I'll ever top THIS. It was a fun Summer project though and kept me busy, which I'm glad it did. Now I can finally work on my next art. Thank GOD haha. Thank you Nintendo for this wonderful series of games. Yes, I do like all of them, SOME more than others. Thank you to my friends and family who supported/encouraged me throughout this long process. Finally, thank YOU for reading all of this (or just skimming through it), and looking at my Art. I really don't care if this is only seen by a few people. I didn't draw this for attention or whatever. I drew this for Me, and I did it, maybe it's not 100% what I wanted to be. But by golly, it sure is close. :)

I'm so tired, Oh yeah here's the unaltered background