blew 'em away!: the history of mario paint
I've decided, if I can get my hands on the software, to start learning Flash (dave edit 11:08 PM: said hands have gotten on said software). I'm not sure why I haven't jumped aboard this ship yet considering all the Mario Paint movies Andrew and I made. Storytime, gather 'round.
In the early 90s, Andrew got the Super Nintendo game Mario Paint for Christmas. It came bundled with the SNES mouse and mousepad, peripherals only used in about 2.53 other games (slightly better statistics, mind you, than the Super Scope 6). It was basically a computer paint program with animation, sound capabilities, and the infamous coffee break flyswatter game. After buying the Mario Paint Player's Guide, however, we entered a whole new world. By hooking up your video game system to a VCR, you could record your creations to videotape. And I am honestly willing to say that I think Andrew and I have recorded more animations with Mario Paint than any other person on this planet. If I was a betting man, which I am, I'd put money on it.
Enter Peabody, the African American star of 95% of our cartoons (that's us, always celebrating diversity and multiculturalism). We would draw and animate a sequence, record it for a few seconds, then change the backgrounds, characters, music and start with the next sequence (just like the pros!). Peabody was born with "Peabody goes to the Pool" (all our stuff had elaborate title screens a la Looney Tunes), a 30-second comedy/adventure extravaganza where Peabody basically just jumps in a freakin' pool and that's it. He was an instant hit with the rest of Okay Samurai, so we continued making these cartoons. Hours upon hours were poured into that video game, churning out some of Peabody's most memorable experiences. In "Peabody meets Barney," our first experiment with mixing animation and live-action, we had Barney the Dinosaur pop out of Peabody's TV and dance with him (only to meet an untimely demise by dancing off a cliff, Wile E. Coyote style). Peabody lost his teeth in Peabody Plays Hockey. Half of his face gets bitten off by a dinosaur in Peabody Goes To The Museum. He even goes crazy and blows up half the world in the cult classic Blew 'Em Away!.
Soon we started doing spinoffs; Farmer Bob: Chicken Sacrifice was the debut of Peabody's friend Farmer Bob, whom he later teamed up with in A Present for Farmer Bob. Peeteeweewas, Peabody's girlfriend, showed up in Andrew's Peabody Does The Laundry (where she shoots a mutant rat with a rocket launcher). Peabody was the celebrity of our house; each new cartoon was premiered in front of our family and shown to our friends.
But oh no, hold your proverbial horses and round up the metaphorical cattle, it didn't stop there. Soon we were using Mario Paint for each and every school project we could, and even some where we couldn't. Every single Mario Paint project we made (understandably) got an A, putting the other kids' dioramas and stenciled posters to shame. Countless book reports. French trivia games. Peabody does CPR for Health. The Issac Newton cartoon for Mrs. Jurinski's 12th grade Calculus. In fact, it was that very cartoon that prompted Mrs. Jurinski to ask me about working for our school's televised morning announcements show (and that's a whole other story for a later day). So I created short introductory cartoons and advertisements for our school announcements, which continued to rock everyone's pants off. Pretty soon it was expected of me to turn in Mario Paint projects, and people would be disappointed if I didn't. When I went off to college, I left video games as a pastime behind, including Mario Paint. I think I satisfied my animation fix with VRML and illustration with Second Nature, but both owed a lot to Mario Paint.
And that's why I want to get back into animation, after seeing an awesome site like Homestar Runner, where they too have archives of their old work with Mario Paint. It seems that this game, whether we've recognized it yet or not, has influenced a small generation of present day web designers and animators. Peabody's hours of cartoons are gathering dust in the Werner family dining room cabinet, but my guess is that Andrew and I will bring them out over this holiday break for an extended viewing.
This has reminded me of so many more stories - the Ed Emberly Make-A-World mural, our "End of Science" movies, the morning announcements hijinks and the best video we ever made: a book report for Shogun. I'm realizing that my biggest interest is in anything dealing with creativity, whether that's movies, drawing, music, writing, web design...whatever. I have felt and still do feel that imagination is one of humankind's most powerful and overlooked abilities. In a nerdy scholarly essay (with footnotes and all that crap that I always added in at the last second during college), Peabody would personify that creative drive. It started with him jumping into a swimming pool. Maybe one day it will end with a proverbial splash and a metaphorical tsunami.
Thursday, December 19 at 7:05 PM
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