Mario vs. Godzilla

"What should we do today?"

"Mario."

"We've already done Mario," I reminded him. I was thinking of this closeup of Mario we did back in September.

"I mean Mario vs. Godzilla," he clarified. He was referring to a YouTube video he's been watching. In it, Mario fights Godzilla in short clips of the two fighters squaring off with silly sound effects interspersed throughout.

"So you want to pause the video and I'll draw that?"

"Yeah, exactly."

We played the video and he picked a still where Mario's face is shown half burned due to a shot from Godzilla's blue fire blast. I didn't want to do that and didn't think the burn would look like a burn when I drew it. "Instead, I'll do Mario with a fireball," I told him. It was a still from a few frames earlier.

He reluctantly agreed.

When I was done, he remarked, "Godzilla's so big and Mario's so small!" He took a moment to take it all in. "You really couldn't make that look like the real thing, so you just did it like that?" he asked critically. He pointed to Mario's face.

"It looks pretty close," I defended. I wasn't exactly sure what he meant, so I showed him the original. I thought it had turned out okay.

"Yeah, but there he looks mad. Here he's just eh."

I ignored the comment. Without any scenery, the snapshot feels a little empty, although, that's exactly how Mario and Godzilla look in the video still on a white background.

"Do you want to write your name and stuff?" I asked him. He took the Sharpie and added just his letters all about. To my surprise he didn't add any of his own embellishments to the scene. This was one time I wish he had.

Mario

"Snack sack idea?"

"Uh, no," he said after he gave it some consideration.

"Should I pick?" I asked, then tested, "Or you don't want a snack sack today?"

"Um, you pick. Just don't do anything Halloween. I have a lot of ideas, but they are for the holidays."

I didn't have much time today. I was going to draw an ICEE since he was so excited to wear his new ICEE shirt on his birthday yesterday, but I didn't think I had enough time to find the right reference. Maybe tomorrow, I thought. Instead I looked down at his placemat and figured that Mario is a great character to draw.

He came around to my side of the table to watch me draw and said, "You've already done Mario."

"Yeah, but not this Mario," I retorted.

"Yeah, not this Mario," he repeated.

I didn't want to user color, but with only outlines, the drawing looked incomplete. I tried adding some shading and am pleased with how it turned out. I love doing cartoon characters.

How about Mario driving...

How about Mario driving...

"Do you want to do all the detail?" he asked after he picked a pretty complex scene of Mario driving. "You don't have to if you don't want to." He went on, "You just have to draw the road and the water. You don't have to do the mountains."

I was up for the challenge today. We hadn't spent much time drawing scenes and I was interested in doing this one. I went ahead and drew the road, the water, the mountains, Mario, and Pac-Man. I spent a lot of time on this one and enjoyed the process.

When he saw it he asked, "You only drew these two?" Although he was correct that I had omitted the other drivers from the original, I was a bit stunned by the response. I brushed the negative feelings off quickly. He moved on too.

"Where's my name daddy?" (I love it when he calls me daddy.) I didn't answer, allowing his eyes the time to scan the drawing. He found it and noticed the "V" on Pac-Man's kart too. Victor Karts. What a fun game that would be!

Rocket ship

Rocket ship

"How about a farm?" he asked.

"Too much stuff," I told him.

"Okay, you can draw a barn house," he conceded.

I didn't have an approving look on my face.

His eyes scanned the room. He countered, "Wait a second! I got an idea! When I looked at the LEGO, I got an idea. How about a LEGO city with two people?"

I wasn't convinced of what exactly I'd draw, but I went ahead and did a search anyway. I couldn't find anything good until I found a Wall-E LEGO drawing that looked cool. He wasn't into that but it did spark the idea to draw a rocket ship.

When I was done, he wanted to add his letters so I let him. As he wrote out each letter, he added "Mario helmets" on each of them. I have no idea why.

He loved this drawing. His approval was evident when he came home from school. "I brought it back home Daddy because I thought it was cool," he told me.