For this week, we had to choose an item in our house to create some posters for. I decided on my Nintendo Switch because, well, it was the first thing I saw on my desk, and I also really like it. It's a system that applies to a wide demographic, and while I normally prefer playing games on PC, the portability of the Switch means that I actually want to buy games for it instead of PC at times. 

Also, Smash Bros is coming out in December. Probably going to waste all of my time playing it for months.

These were my original sketched plans for all of the Switch commercials before I settled on all of the final drawings/poses. 

When dealing with a company like Nintendo who (much like Disney), owns an enormous variety of famous, popular and beloved characters, I felt that incorporating them was vital to the design of the marketing. Nostalgia and recognisable imagery is a very powerful tool for marketing, and characters like Mario (Super Mario Bros), Link (The Legend of Zelda), and Pikachu (and all the other Pokemon) all prove to be highly nostalgic characters that are close to people's hearts. While I ended up using them more to appeal to the younger side of the spectrum of these advertisements, I felt that the important thing to address is that while marketing directed to, say, children is designed to appeal to them, it also has to appeal to their parents. I would say it's safe to assume that many parents would find the face of Mario more appealing on a game system than many other characters, because they probably remember playing Super Mario Bros on the NES in the 1980s, and trust the brand because of their fond memories.

Focusing on young children, I thought they would find the characters of Nintendo more appealing and immediately engaging. It was either between Mario and Pikachu, but since Super Mario Odyssey is already out, I thought it would make more sense. Also, Mario is the mascot of Nintendo, so that works.

I did a lot of research on previous Nintendo commercials and posters, and focused on a minimalist look (probably on a red background) with basic, short text. I wanted to keep the "Anytime, anywhere, with anyone" tagline from the official marketing, especially since handheld games seem to appeal a lot to kids. iPods, iPads/tablets, the original Gameboy through the GBA, DS and 3DS have always been huge successes with children, so I decided on drawing the handheld mode of the Switch for this poster rather than the TV mode.

The tagline could probably be better, and the actual skills of the drawing use some work, but it's "fine" I guess. Some colour would have helped to sell the idea too, with the vibrant red of Nintendo's marketing as the background colour. Establishing an actual font to be used instead of me just quickly drawing some basic flat text would have been better as well. But in terms of the core idea, I feel this is something that I could actually see in the real world - if it was taken further. Probably as a 3D rendered image.

Inspired by the Smash 3DS marketing campaign from 2014 of 'Settle it in Smash!', I wanted to focus on the idea of a couple living together with a Switch, and using it to decide what to eat for dinner over a game of Smash Bros. I know from my own experience that the competitive, friendly rivalry of Smash Bros appeals a LOT to young adults, so I decided it was appropriate for this Switch poster. And for the character choice, I kept it simple with Mario and Pac-Man (who is not owned by Nintendo, but is represented in Super Smash Bros) since they are arguably the two most recognisable videogame characters of all time.

Drawing the hands on the controllers was the hardest part, but since I have the controllers myself, I was able to use my own hands as reference. The TV is also really distorted, but that's what I get when I don't have a ruler on me. 

Perhaps the character choice could have been changed to skew more to the young adult market specifically, with characters like Link/Zelda/Ganondorf from the Legend of Zelda series, Samus Aran from the Metroid series, or Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series (not owned by Nintendo, but part of Smash as a 3rd party representative). I feel there's nothing wrong with showing Mario and Pac-Man, but when targeting the young adult demographic, it may prove to be better using characters that resonate better with that age range in particular.

I think this one is pretty good, at least in concept, and could exist as a real ad, but as something professionally photographed with real hands, controllers and a television. Again, minimal and to the point. Those darn millennials are too lazy to read any more information than that, am I right?? Damn snowflake generation, I'm going to use my plastic straws and you can't stop me!!!!!

(that's a joke)

This is a pretty standard concept for this kind of marketing, focusing on a father-and-child dynamic playing together, probably over a game of Mario Kart. I looked at a lot of example images and used a stock photo of a similar framing to get the body shapes and posing that I needed.

If I were to suggest an improvement, I would prefer having a way of communicating what game in particular is being played. Mario Kart is an obvious system-seller so showing it would help. Also, my drawing abilities concerning perspective and complex shapes need improving, especially with that couch. Much like with all of these, I think this could easily exist in the real world, but as a photographed poster.

This was the hardest one to think of a good idea for, since videogame consoles don't exactly appeal a lot to older folks. I originally thought that having a grandfather/mother with their grandkids would make for a good poster, but it looks too similar to the family one, so I decided against it. The best thing I could think of was appealing to the Wii's market of basic, simple party games with motion controls and other junk with the Joy-Con controllers. The obvious choice was tennis, specifically through Mario Tennis Aces which has motion controls built-in. Perfect fit for authenticity while still featuring the motion controls for older folks, and I still wanted to keep the basic, catchy text as a little tagline.

I had to practice a lot on the tennis pose in my notebook (viewed at the top of this page), and the final outcome of this one is probably my least favourite. I had trouble nailing the design/pose of the grandfather, along with making him look like he's wearing "old people clothes". I had to draw a lot of different tests for the old man's pose, so I wasted a lot of time just trying to get that part nailed down.

I decided to focus on this as my final poster, re-sketching the entire pencilled image and inking it. Unfortunately I have a lot of trouble maintaining a nice, steady hand with my inking, so this doesn't look perfect, but I wanted to add further some details where possible.

I used the pen shading techniques we had learnt from last week in here - hatching/cross-hatching - to demonstrate darker regions. I also tried to represent the words here in actual "font" of some kind, or at least the suggestion of a font, with actual full block letters.

I feel that this overall concept is the most appealing as a poster, and the one that I could see being real. With Smash Bros coming out soon and ALWAYS being a massive system-seller, and appealing to a friendly rivalry between young people, it just works best for this series of images. I still wanted to keep this one simple and have a snappy tagline, and I think it fits pretty well. I would have liked to add some colour for additional detail but did not really have the time. The shapes on Mario and Pac-Man actually look a little worse compared to the original sketches, which is a shame.