here are the rest of the characters, im trying to capture the pixelated effect of the original super mario bros, now its time to turn these into a pattern...

these are some of the elements of the mandala ive outlined today, i stuck to the original colour palette except for mario because his original red overalls and brown shirt looked crap compared to the more well known blue overalls and red jumper, enjoy

block

just starting making elements for my mandala, started off simple with a block from original mario, here it is... the old school pixelated look is maybe an aesthetic i can use to tie together my mandala..

so ive found a shot of the very old mario, looking for elements to make up backgrounds, that can be repeated, so im thinking of using the mystery box and brickwork to make geometric patterns as well as pixelated mario and the ground pattern

flowers....

thought i,d try apply the skills to some simple forms, so heres some flowers i have done using the technique, the one one the left uses the one on the right as petals, which creates an intricate pattern

illustrator

so we just learnt how to make repeating circle patterns in illustrator which ive been experementing with a bit, you can get some pretty good calieda scope effects, probably will use something similar to make my mandala have a complexity and intricacy about it which i couldn't get by hand, heres a screen grab of the work...

Rest of the gang

Just looking at the rest of the mario gang, probably frogot some but here are the main culprits, luigi, yoshi, live giving mushroom (interesting concept), princess peach, boo the ghost, wario and bowser........

just updated my gadgets with a game i thought might be appropriiate for my chosen topic. its some sickos version on mario, bit fun, bit wierd..... enjoy

mandala idea

ok so ive been thinking about my mandala and gaming a bit on the pc in the mean time and had an idea to do a mandala on gaming or something that represents a gamers utopia.

Anyway im thinking on doing something related to mario 64 (best game ever) or like classic super mario becuase its 2d and could be used to make good patterns... well see how it goes!

why do we design?

today we were posed the question in a lecture for dgn, "why do we design?"
its an interesting question, and one which there is obviously no difinitive answer to however i, as most people have a few ideas about why I design, or at least i think i do

i design for a few reasons, mainly becuase i started young, with things like lego building and changing their plans, improving. As we all know nothings perfect and that means that something can always be better and that drives me to design and create. that however is just one perspective. design to me also is an obligation to humantiy, if your skilled at something, share it with everyone. An iteresting idea came up that if every designer spent 10% of their time not designing chairs or cars and doing something to help people who are less fortunate, the world would be a much better place. Its a thought to keep in the back of your mind , when desiging a race car or space ship. however if your passion is race cars or space ships it should not stop you from desiging them but you should at least think of their affect on the now global village.

After just listening to a lecture by phillipe stark his ideas were quite good and i think the most important thing he said was that we all have the obligation to see. Metaphorically, walk with your head held up so that you can see the world around you. We have to be intelligent, or at least strive towards it. Western society for the most part, especially in australia has it good and we can design $1000 shoes or bags, however we should never loose sight of the bigger picture. On a final note, im not some hippy save the trees no nukes kind of dude, i just feel that we should design for the betterment of humanity in the long run and not as much for the betterment of our selves. i know just because we should dosent make it so, but we should at least try once in a while to do something that makes a difference