Big Bad Bashin'

There’s a forceful argument which contends that villainous fictional characters are more fun to root for than the heroes, and this is very often the case in the world of video games. The medium has let loose a huge array of memorable and appealingly dastardly bad guys, from Dr Robotnik to Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde (the ghosts out of Pac Man, fact fans) - and yet almost without exception, they are destined to be forever thwarted by cute woodland animals in sneakers, or whatever.

Well not this time, matey.

This illo was inspired by the the mighty Zexyz, master of pencil-powered pictures and hairy scary nutter. Through e-mail based nattering we discovered that we had a mutual liking for two of the finest video game villains ever - namely Bowser, the hulking lizard guy who makes a living out of terrorising the Mario Brothers, and Big Blag, the even-more-hulking rodent bloke from the Battletoads games - and he observed that they’d make an excellent hero-hammering team. All they needed was some suitably hefty opposition, and Donkey Kong and Pimple (the biggest of the three Battletoads) were the ideal candidates. Oh, and I also figured that an equally brawny fella would be required to referee the fight, hence the appearance of Zexyz himself in the background, in all his sabre-toothed tigeryness.*

Up until this point I’d never drawn anything this size using just plain pencils, but the inspiration to give it a try came, once again, from Mr Z. The vast majority of his work is done in this way, to absolutely stunning effect (as you can see for yourself), and I thought it would be interesting to attempt something similar. It proved to be greatly enjoyable - and as soon as the opportunity arises, I intend to do more along the same lines. Stay tuned!

Pretty much all the characters seen here are copyrighted in no uncertain terms to Nintendo, except for Zexyz, who is the copyright of himself, natch. I hope that’s cleared that up for any lawyers who might be reading.

Matthew Smith

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