Super Mario Brothers 3: Mash Up

To go against the grain, I was never a huge fan of the Super Smash Brothers games. Not for any reason hailing from a higher horse, but because I simply suck at it... Hard. I can't, however, NOT love the cross-overs going on there. Which is why I think Mario 3 deserves a much needed Mash-Up.

Here's two ideas to get the ball rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' WHAT!

Eetsa' Meeee!
~ Mark

Son'Uva ACTUAL DEVELOPMENT!!

Yeah Son'Uva!

It's like an old arch enemy, constantly coming back to mess with my brain. I had all but given up hope of ever getting this game finished due mostly to the fact that my knowledge of any real coding is slim to nothing... Well, at least something about me is slim these days. However, I don't like to think of myself as a quitter and by giving up hope of ever getting this game done, that's pretty much the definition of a quitter. So this weekend, I buckled down and spend hours plotting out the actual logic for allowing a user to control a character using their keyboard. Now, before all you real coders start calling me a n00b, keep in mind that I, well... Am totally a n00b. So don't judge me! The tricky part wasn't so much telling the character to throw a punch when the user clicks "Z", the tricky part was telling the game what to do when the user clicks "Z" at the same time as "UP" and "RIGHT". There's literally an infinite number of multiple keystroke scenarios and every single one nearly popped a brain vessel when I sat down and thought it through. Such a pain!

Yeah, that didn't make a lot of sense (to you OR to me) so I suppose you should just play around with what I was able to pump out this weekend and let your brain numb itself for a few moments. Have fun controlling the dark, mysterious MAITH:

Click it up:

Z, X, C, V, B,
~ Mark


Sonuva by Mark Marianelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Missile Toes!

My wife told me I should draw this... Then I drew it... Then she got grossed out by it.

Fire ONE... Little Piggie!
~ Mark

Code Red Velvet

The news is pretty much common knowledge at this point, but last week the TSA confiscated a woman's cupcake on the grounds that the frosting was a "safety hazard"... I probably don't need to elaborate much on this, all you have to do is type in "TSA CUPCAKE" on Google and you'll get a billion articles.

My good friend Kevin over at Wolfmantis is friends with the owner of the suicide bombing pastry, Rebecca Hains, and worked with her and a local band to create a little jingle about the cupcake in question titled "Code Red Velvet". Seeing a good opportunity to have a collaboration between Wolfmantis and Six AM Comics, Kevin asked me to create an animation for said jingle... Naturally, I jumped right on board.

The following is the result:

This was the most fun I've had in a while. The animation/jingle was meant to mimic old Sesame Street animations from back in the day. Only we combined that with terrorism and an old game called "Scorched Earth" (iShoot if you have it on an iPhone). Anyway, hope you enjoyed!

Code Red Velvet!
~ Mark

Motion Comics

I do love me some animatin'! Only thing is, I'm an incredibly lazy human being, and the thought of pursuing any kind of professional animation like Loony Toons or Ren & Stimpy makes me feel lethargic. Luckily for me, there's a whole sub-genre of animation devoted to animating comics, Motion Comics if you will. The first time I had ever heard of this technique was with the series "Broken Saints" back in 2003. Since then, you see this sort of thing done all over iTunes, and it's pretty amazing people didn't do this more back in the day (or maybe they did and I just didn't may attention... because I'm lazy).

Anyway, I figured I'd dabble in this a little by animating two of my favorite Scholars comics from back in my earlier days of illustration. The first was about how Stan seemingly breezed through his educational career by cheating*:

*If you go to sixamcomics and type in the Konami Code, it'll bring you to this video.

The second video is a tale of the greatest "guy moment" ever witnessed in the history of men:

So yeah, there you have it. Watch em', love em', pay me money.

Seriously, pay me.
~ Mark