Geno's Awakening [SUPER MARIO RPG Animatic]

The Star Road Warrior’s story retold in an animatic/motion comic format.

SPOILER WARNING: This animation covers a lot of ground in the Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars storyline. Despite some of the original storyline being retold in a different light in this project, I recommend playing either the original game or the remake first if you want to avoid any potential Super Mario RPG spoilers. Frogfucius, also warns you at the beginning XD

If you couldn't tell already, I'm a huge fan of the Mario RPGs, and PMTTYD and SMRPG: LotSS are two of my favorite Nintendo games. It's so exciting that these two RPGs were both remade and released within a year apart from each other (and M&L: Brothership later this year as well!). It’s wild that the Super Mario RPG remake was developed by Nintendo and Square Enix, which seems like an unlikely partnership nowadays! I can't believe these two remakes are still real! Be on the lookout for many hidden Mario RPG references - across the Super Mario PRG, Paper Mario, and Mario & Luigi series in the animatic.

At the announcement of the Super Mario RPG Remake I started to work on this animatic. With my Donkey Kong animation nearing completion I decided to sideline that project for a little while and make DK the priority. Returning to this project every so often with my interest perked at more Mario RPG announcements, I decided to complete this in a more animatic-like format.

For anyone unaware of the character Geno (or ♡ ♪ ! ?) from Super Mario RPG, he is a star spirit that inhabits a wooden doll owned by a young Toad boy, named Gaz. Geno has been sent from a “higher authority” to restore peace in Mario’s world. His purpose is essential to the Super Mario RPG storyline, and when fighting in battle he acts as a glass cannon (with high offense and low defense). In my opinion, he is one of the coolest and chillest Mario characters and he has only been on this one stand alone game (with a few notable references in other Nintendo games). Square (Square Enix nowadays) had previously described Geno having close resemblance to "Pinocchio" in a Nintendo Power article.

This animatic is a little unorthodox and in some ways feels closer to a finished animation and in some ways not. It's more of a hybrid between a motion comic and an animatic, with some more heavily animated elements mixed in. I also wanted to give each character their own unique outline color, to make them all stand out from each other as well as background elements. The colored outline for the characters also represents life - which is most notable when the Geno doll is inhabited by the star spirit. It may be disappointing that this is not in full color and as of sharing this, I don’t plan to continue to build on this project, in an effort to pursue newer and different animation ideas.

This project was not built at all with Adobe Animate (my typical animation tool), instead I had just used Adobe Photoshop and created animation through the use of layer comps. This style is mostly experimental and I don’t plan to continue in this format. Initially this process seemed to work quite well (when more story boarding the animatic), but when it came to animating sections the process felt a bit clunkier in my opinion, despite the ease to create some different line work and broader depth in shading the characters.

This animatic also brings back my amateur voice acting and this surely tested out my range with a whole bunch of characters lol. I had a focus on trying to voice all of the characters and avoid the use of any voice clips from Mario games. It was fun trying to recreate some classic Mario voice impressions and at the same time create new voices for Geno, Mallow, Bowyer and other Super Mario RPG characters.

Chapters:
0:00 ~ Frog Sage/Frogfucius Spoiler Warning
0:16 ~ Rose Town Sleeps as Disaster Strikes
0:40 ~ The Geno Doll Awakens!
0:56 ~ Forest Maze Journey
1:24 ~ Geno vs Bowyer
2:08 ~ Help Arrives
2:29 ~ Mario Party Vs Bowyer
2:43 ~ Team Introduction
3:06 ~ The Fate of the Star Road
3:51 ~ Who is the Doll-ish Figure?
4:02 ~ Acquired the Green Star Piece!
4:10 ~ Rescue the other Stars Across the Land and Sea
5:12 ~ Farewell Geno . . .
5:34 ~ Returning Gaz's Doll
5:44 ~ OUTRO

Music in chronological order (all from the Super Mario RPG Remake):
0.00 ~ Grandpa and the Upbeat Tadpoles
0.16 ~ Play ‘Save the World’ With Me!
0.23 ~ The Sword Descends and the Stars Scatter
0.38 ~ Geno Awakens
0.52 ~ Beware of the Forest’s Mushrooms
1.24 ~ Battling a Weapon Boss
2.42 ~ Welcome to Booster Tower
4.02 ~ Got a Star Piece!
4.10 ~ Where Flowers Bloom Under Sunlight
5.12 ~ Farewell Geno… / The Wishes from the Stars
5.34 ~ Let's Do the Fooka-Fooka!

Music and sound effects are owned by Nintendo & SQUARE ENIX. The soundtrack for Super Mario RPG Remake was composed by Yoko Shimomura.

#supermariorpg #nintendo #animatic