E.Gadd's Garage Background: Iterative Design (Patreon)

The 1st one is the final one I'm going forward with for the time being.  It may need adjustments, but this one fits the best for the tone of the show.  I definitely wanted to make the house look like it was built in a similar architecture to a typical building in the Mushroom Kingdom which means large wood beams, bricks, etc.  I wanted the garage to look like something that was added on by E.Gadd when he moved in, so I made the house with warm colors and the garage with cool to contrast them. It also looks like a big Gamecube as a little nod to the 1st system he appeared on.

The style that popped in my head at the beginning of the design phase was Victorian to go with the types of places you visit in the Mansion series, but it looked really out of place tonally.  This isn't really a ghost hunting series.  Then I kept pushing that tall vertical design and iterating on the roof tiles and ceiling shapes til I came to a dead end with that basic shape.

I next widened the base shape of the house and started playing with the design of the materials around it.  Again I wanted to emphasize that very traditional looking architecture in the Mushroom Kingdom which bounces between European, Colonial, and Amish.  I got rid of the metal looking railings and swapped it out for wood; played around with the landscape too until I got the right feel.  Parts of the kingdom, especially the grassy wooded areas look a lot like places in Western PA where I grew up, so I try to include those things: lots of trees, hills, bushes, high horizon lines, etc.

The line weight changed from the last Mario House BG as well, so I can have a differently styled area to work with when I test animations over them.  The thickness of the lines, whether or not I end up using them, also helps me to simplify shapes to make things more readable and less time consuming to make.