As a Nintendo fan working on a Mario Kart game was a dream come true. This innovative combination of remote control cars in an augmented reality format on the Switch platform was a challenging and rewarding experience. Nintendo projects demand the highest levels of accuracy and precision. Every element down to the smallest detail is scrutinized by the license holders to ensure consistency across the entire universe of their properties.
As the primary technical artist on this title I meticulously hand painted skin weighting on every Mario and Luigi character costume, and vehicle along with Chain Chomp, Bullet Bill, Piranha Plant, Koopa Shells, all of the Koopalings, Amps, Bobombs, Lakitu with his count down timer on a fishing pole and more. Many elements required customized textures, materials, shaders, rigs and a good dose of Mario magic.
The iconic coin took many iterations to reach what I demanded of my abilities. The textures, reflection map and shader had to meet the highest quality bar to satisfy Shigeru Miyamoto himself and the the millions of fans that have captured trillions of these coins that first appeared in 1983.
After organizing, weighting and integrating their models the Koopaling’s textures were hand painted. Multi layered materials including custom textures for each of their individual clown karts were created and applied.
Designing, modeling and texturing one of the reward trophies put my personal mark on this critically acclaimed game.
In this video Karts decked out in Mario’s livery are displayed. After developing the naming convention and source control scheme for each Kart’s 3d and 2d elements that were delivered by our lead modeler and outsourcing teams after many rounds of critiques, I rigged, weighted and integrated the large number of assets involved for each vehicle including a wide variety of script driven dashboard elements. The steering wheels and tires, individually tweaked to perfection, are separate elements that were driven by the underlying control scheme. Luigi had a full set of karts also with most elements being customized by texture overrides.
Also on display are the icons for the cars and costumes I rendered as source for use in the interface by designing a custom animation pose, camera scheme and lighting layout. Our UI art wizard polished the renders and created the horn icons by hand.
The Toad Crew Team can be seen at the broadcast desk, another element I skin weighted and wrangled in to the game along with the iconic pipe.
My tasks included modeling refinements, rigging, skin weighting, asset integration, texture work, materials assembly, formatting and renders for UI assets, lighting, naming convention and folder structure setup, outsourcing planning and reviews.
Countless laps, Rainbow Road runs, Power Star dashes, Mushroom grabs, Boomerang throws, Koopa shell tosses and banana peels later the day was won.
Let’s a go!
Control a real-life Mario Kart with Nintendo Switch and watch it come to life in the game.
