Here’s some of the pre-production art I did for Smash (concepts, character models and boards/layouts specifically).

The project was intense from the get-go - we were given roughly 7 weeks to make the entire thing from scratch and I’d just recovered from repetitive strain injury, so the stress levels were through the roof at times. I designed Markiplier’s announcer character in 15 minutes, going for a mixture between the Dragon Ball Z announcer and Space Dandy.

As the director I knew I’d have to make sacrifices; I intentionally boarded some shots in a ‘side-on’ fashion to not only emulate the look of Smash Bros’ actual gameplay, but also make sure we didn’t have too many ambitious shots. We also had to ditch the idea of shading pretty early on, going for something more animation-driven than art driven (the opposite of the Zelda Rap, basically)

I can’t thank Jake enough for assembling the crew and keeping production steady despite already dealing with about 10 billion other things, allowing me to focus entirely on the creative and technical side of the video. It was a huge pleasure to work on this, and it’s all because of the team. We kept each other in high spirits, traded techniques, argued about whether Yoshi should be pink, and generally just had a really good time despite the demanding deadline.

Paul ter Voorde and Nico (better known as Twistedgrim) tanked through the major 'storytelling’ shots and even helped out on layouts when I was being overwhelmed with other things to do on the project. Spencer and Max fucking knocked it out of the park with their action shots (Spencer especially was able to work with a ridiculously crude 'diagram’ of Pika/Fox’s fight scene and turn it into gold). Javier, Temmie, Brandon and Chris all turned in great work as well, interpreting the boards perfectly and keeping the energy of the cartoon going.

And of course I have to thank the cleanup crew as well for lifting the weight from our collective shoulders and following my layouts so well. Audrey, Everett, Aileen, Cal, Nathan, Sandra: no matter how small or large your contribution to cleanup was, it’s the reason the cartoon got finished on time. Thanks so much.

Also, I’m glad people are picking up on the Jojo references. Polnareff is the best character, by the way.

-Joel