Why is Mario's shirt brown?

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DRW
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Joined: Sat Sep 07, 2013 2:59 pm

Re: Why is Mario's shirt brown?

Post by DRW »

Oziphantom wrote: Mon Dec 21, 2020 11:01 pm also you want to keep the brand image of mario the same.
If you compare his clothes in "Donkey Kong" artworks with his clothes in "Mario Bros." artworks, he didn't have a brand image yet.

In fact, in the pre-"Super Mario Bros." artworks, even the character himself looked completely different. SMB was literally the first time that Mario had his typical look.

And it wasn't until the second game (the Japanese SMB2, "The Lost Levels") that anybody besides Mario had their typical look: Bowser and the Princess didn't look like Bowser and the Princess in the SMB1 artwork yet, and the Koopa Troopers were drawn in a strange style. Only in SMB2 (J) was their design standardized:
https://assets.catawiki.nl/assets/2020/ ... 9a1db4.jpg

And even there, they hadn't established yet that the Princess is taller than Mario. This and Luigi's canon artworks weren't defined until SMB2 (USA).
(Although it was brought to my attention that Luigi's modern design was first used in the box art of "Famicom Grand Prix II" which predates SMB2 (USA) by a few months. But I assume the design was probably still established because of SMB2 and the two games were simply in development at the same time, so the car racing game already used the new Luigi design.)
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Pokun
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Re: Why is Mario's shirt brown?

Post by Pokun »

Yeah Miyamoto put Mario into everything in an attempt to make him a mascot character. He is easy to draw and recognize so Miyamoto often told other artists that they could use him, which is probably why he looks a little differently every time. Though it's interesting that Miyamoto, who draw the original Mario look, also drew the quite different SMB1 look which then stuck as his modern look. So the final difference wasn't a matter of a different artist at all.

He drew Bowser with a cattle-look because he was inspired by the ox-demonking, but other developers thought he should be a turtle to match the other turtle enemies. He was changed into a turtle before SMB2j, but apparently not in time for the SMB1 boxart. Considering this, it's interesting that they went back to the ox-demon look in ANNSMB which came after SBM2j. I guess they just wanted it to match the original SMB1 boxart, since it's basically a variation of that game.
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