Hi, my name's James.
I love pixel art. There's something really beautiful about the irreducibility of it, the smallest scale of detail. I've been obsessed with pixel and digital art ever since I got a copy of Mario Paint back in 1995, along with the Mario Paint Player's Guide.
Then when I got an early Windows 95 PC, I got hooked on MS Paint. I would often jump between my SNES and PC, copying sprites I drew on one machine to the other. Mario paint had a lot more creative tools (animations and music) than MS Paint, but on my PC I had seemingly endless storage space. My folder's will filled with BITMAPS and GIFs I'd downloaded on the early internet.
Mario Paint was such a huge inspiration for me. I used to copy the sprite work from the Player's Guide on MS Paint, and had quite a collection. But I never finished the whole book. Which is why I started this side project of mine, where I'm making an attempt to digitize the entire Mario Paint Player's Guide. As far as I'm aware, it hasn't been done yet. I've seen recreations of some of the pages here or there online, but I haven't seen the whole thing recreated. And I think it's worthwhile to archive these sprite works. They're official Nintendo artwork, yet they seem to only exist online in a crude JPEG scanned format.
Here's some samples of what I've got so far:
![[Image: 31611358dbc758d18b0f31a1d1b214547ea74580.png]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/cf3a7dbef41a876f25efb9bda3e3e218/0419ca8f0183bc59-ab/s640x960/31611358dbc758d18b0f31a1d1b214547ea74580.png)
Pages 104 & 105 recreated from:
https://archive.org/details/Nintendo_Pla...5/mode/1up
![[Image: 8982fa78d2f2b0114b393e50c8b9e1a35e659243.gifv]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/d187cbd10d018b67d90f0c49b36c6d67/0419ca8f0183bc59-59/s640x960/8982fa78d2f2b0114b393e50c8b9e1a35e659243.gifv)
Zelda scene recreated from these pages:
https://archive.org/details/Nintendo_Pla...5/mode/2up
The book is really interesting, because some of the sprite work is ripped directly from official games, but others are custom, or slightly edited. Like these for example:
![[Image: 0e7543761dd441822f61008d029fef1f23129b3a.gifv]](https://64.media.tumblr.com/d334d938df367dea276e3b03c922a5d5/0419ca8f0183bc59-9f/s1280x1920/0e7543761dd441822f61008d029fef1f23129b3a.gifv)
Almost all of the Mario sprites are nearly identical, but not wholly identical. They maintain the same shape, but the artists for the Mario Paint Guide decided to go for a totally different shading/lighting angle on basically every sprite. For example, the Fire Mario sprite is a copy from Super Mario World, except his ear is outlined in black, and all color outlines are replaced with black, similar to the Allstars style (including SMB3's glove-less hands).
Frog Mario's hands and shading are different, and Statue Mario's lighting is coming from a totally different angle.
As for Bowser and Ganon, their sprites are loosely based on their SNES appearances, but are totally unique here. Wario's sprite is a colorized mix of his Wario Land 2 sprite, and his Wario's Woods sprite. But as far as I could tell, that exact pose doesn't exist in either game -- it's a unique composite of two game's sprites, with a unique color scheme.
Link's sprite is basically identical to LttP (except in a Mario Paint palette), while only Zelda's rough shape is the same. Her crown and dress are altered. The items from LttP are almost identical, but the color and shading of the sword and shield are unique
These are all official Nintendo sprite-work, that didn't technically appear in any released game. And I feel like anyone who's into sprite rips would also be interested.
Anyway, I've used stuff on Spriters Resources for various projects over the years, and I figured it's about time to sign up and participate.
I love pixel art. There's something really beautiful about the irreducibility of it, the smallest scale of detail. I've been obsessed with pixel and digital art ever since I got a copy of Mario Paint back in 1995, along with the Mario Paint Player's Guide.
Then when I got an early Windows 95 PC, I got hooked on MS Paint. I would often jump between my SNES and PC, copying sprites I drew on one machine to the other. Mario paint had a lot more creative tools (animations and music) than MS Paint, but on my PC I had seemingly endless storage space. My folder's will filled with BITMAPS and GIFs I'd downloaded on the early internet.
Mario Paint was such a huge inspiration for me. I used to copy the sprite work from the Player's Guide on MS Paint, and had quite a collection. But I never finished the whole book. Which is why I started this side project of mine, where I'm making an attempt to digitize the entire Mario Paint Player's Guide. As far as I'm aware, it hasn't been done yet. I've seen recreations of some of the pages here or there online, but I haven't seen the whole thing recreated. And I think it's worthwhile to archive these sprite works. They're official Nintendo artwork, yet they seem to only exist online in a crude JPEG scanned format.
Here's some samples of what I've got so far:
Pages 104 & 105 recreated from:
https://archive.org/details/Nintendo_Pla...5/mode/1up
Zelda scene recreated from these pages:
https://archive.org/details/Nintendo_Pla...5/mode/2up
The book is really interesting, because some of the sprite work is ripped directly from official games, but others are custom, or slightly edited. Like these for example:
Almost all of the Mario sprites are nearly identical, but not wholly identical. They maintain the same shape, but the artists for the Mario Paint Guide decided to go for a totally different shading/lighting angle on basically every sprite. For example, the Fire Mario sprite is a copy from Super Mario World, except his ear is outlined in black, and all color outlines are replaced with black, similar to the Allstars style (including SMB3's glove-less hands).
Frog Mario's hands and shading are different, and Statue Mario's lighting is coming from a totally different angle.
As for Bowser and Ganon, their sprites are loosely based on their SNES appearances, but are totally unique here. Wario's sprite is a colorized mix of his Wario Land 2 sprite, and his Wario's Woods sprite. But as far as I could tell, that exact pose doesn't exist in either game -- it's a unique composite of two game's sprites, with a unique color scheme.
Link's sprite is basically identical to LttP (except in a Mario Paint palette), while only Zelda's rough shape is the same. Her crown and dress are altered. The items from LttP are almost identical, but the color and shading of the sword and shield are unique
These are all official Nintendo sprite-work, that didn't technically appear in any released game. And I feel like anyone who's into sprite rips would also be interested.
Anyway, I've used stuff on Spriters Resources for various projects over the years, and I figured it's about time to sign up and participate.