Artist Creates Incredible ‘Super Mario Bros.’ Notebook Animation

Nintendo’s iconic face of the brand has been created in many different forms over the years, but one of the most impressive versions of Mario to show up recently comes from a flipbook animation that takes us through an entire level of the classic Super Mario Bros. formula.

The artist named Kisaragi Hutae is responsible for the video above that shows Mario grabbing mushrooms and stomping on Goombas. Mario picks up a Fire Flower powerup and a Super Star before tearing through the rest of the level to grab that flag at the end. Luigi gets the short end of the stick again though with the book closing on Mario’s brother before he could get his shot at a level.

Hutae’s stop-motion animation is already impressive in its own right, but it’s made even better by the addition of the sound effects that Super Mario fans were probably already hearing in their heads even if the sound was off. Hutae shared the video on Twitter to show off the artist’s creation, and in a follow-up tweet to that message, the creator showed how parts of the animation were made. Hutae created the background using a ballpoint pen in the notebook and the characters shown moving across the screen were actually cutouts which Hutae moved across the pages to mimic the movement of Mario and how he stomps on enemies and knocks them aside.

After seeing how Hutae created the characters and watching the video again, you’ll notice where the effects are used. Moments like when Mario grabs the first Mushroom and morphs into a crumpled-up ball before springing back to a larger character are one example along with the moments when he hops on a Goomba’s head to squish them down before moving onto the next part of the level.

The artist is responsible for other stop-motion creations including ones like the examples above which use beads instead of notebook drawings, and you can see many more of these on Hutae’s Twitter account.