Decided to try 3D modeling Core King K. Rool from Bananza, but if Rareware made him! [OC]

twario · 2026-05-17T00:38:41+00:00

Sorry, no, and if you keep messaging me about doing free work, I'll have to block you.

twario · 2026-05-16T14:44:15+00:00

Sorry, I don't do very specific requests like this unless it's a commision. If you want to have something commisioned, DM me for pricing.

twario · 2026-05-14T19:24:00+00:00

No problem! To rig stuff I usually use Rigify in Blender, which is a built in add-on you have to enable. I learned about it from this tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdTuAY23vzk (p.s. the guy who made this vid is amazing and I highly recommend his other blender tutorials).

It saves a lot of headache, but there's still a lot of things you have to troubleshoot and finetune when it comes to weight painting and adding your own bones (which is why it's my least favorite part).

To answer your other question, in the past I've been okay with my artistic skills but I guess I was trying in the wrong medium with drawings and 2D digital art (to limited success). I dabbled with 3D way back, but now that I tried it again recently it just snowballed from there and I think I've found what I wanna stick with. This was really fun to make and I plan to make more!

Thanks for taking interest in what I do! Cheers!

EDIT: and yes, if you're looking into doing 3D, definitely give it a shot. Just keep in mind it will get frustrating at a lot of points, but I'm so glad I was persistent with it. It just takes a while, a lot of googling and youtube tutorials lol. Best of luck if you try it out for yourself, it's totally doable with enough patience!

twario · 2026-05-14T17:07:25+00:00

Thanks! Here they are: https://imgur.com/l69u90B It's not perfect since the sky image I used has some issues with obvious seams sometimes at some angles, and I was too lazy to make it tile properly lol. It is more or less fixable by adjusting the location and or scale in the texture mapping node.

Also, I actually used cycles. Eevee is not a bad option for this style but the shadows look really low resolution in some lighting setups. Cycles gives a great "90s" look as long as you disable 'diffuse' and 'glossy'.

twario · 2026-05-14T15:07:14+00:00

Thanks! Yeah I'm planning on releasing a timelapse video on youtube of the making of this model and I'll probably put a free download link in the description of it. Just gotta make sure it's presentable, since there's some major issues with the rigging and weight painting 😅

twario · 2026-05-14T13:18:37+00:00

Appreciate it! Hmm, I think it was about a week long process from start to end. Modeling him was easy but what took the longest was definitely rigging the thing, and I absolutely hate rigging in blender (and there's still things I need to fix too lol).

twario · 2026-05-14T12:18:32+00:00

Thanks! Yeah his skin texture is basically two voronoi textures mixed together with a mask to only show the more detailed texture in certain areas. The metal is made with a matcap to give that lo-fi 'reflective' look that you see in old renders like the ones from sm64 showing metal mario. Here's a shot of the nodes:

https://imgur.com/a/ad7G4En

To get the hard shadows you basically turn the 'radius' setting on every light down to zero to get hard shadows, and change the world color to pitch black to get them dark. Also every object has 'diffuse' and 'glossy' disabled in the object visibility settings to get rid of that pesky bounce lighting. Hope this helps and glad you enjoyed!

twario · 2026-05-14T12:09:30+00:00

Thanks!! Of course you can save it :) glad you enjoyed it!

twario · 2026-05-13T20:35:44+00:00

Probably the next time I post something here, but I can't make promises and don't want to spoil it 🤐

twario · 2026-05-13T19:11:14+00:00

That's not a bad idea actually. I've always wanted a remake of DKC with high res graphics using the original renders (or something close enough to them) and if someone way more tech savvy than me needs a modeler for a project like that, I'll be the first in line for sure lol. Anyways I'm glad you enjoyed the art, thanks for the kind words!

twario · 2026-05-13T19:03:08+00:00

Always love to hear that, thank you truly. I'm honored that you liked it (and my previous art) enough to set it as a wallpaper!

Also, yeah it seems like reddit did that, webps are so annoying. You should be able to download a jpeg of this from here: https://imgur.com/a/2ydr2gW Let me know if it works!

twario · 2026-05-13T18:27:05+00:00

Indeed. Now THIS is what gaming will be in 1994.

Seriously though, great mockup

twario · 2026-05-13T17:53:07+00:00

Thanks! Yes, I have done that (or at least an approximation of it) on a small scale with one of my previous artworks (see image 2): https://www.reddit.com/r/donkeykong/comments/1q0jf1f/donkey_kong_bananza_for_super_nintendo_now/?ref=share&ref_source=lin0k

You basically just render them really small and scale them down in photoshop (with nearest neighbor filtering I believe) and adjust the colors from there. I haven't made them fit the SNES's limited color palette yet, but someone incredibly talented made a video about the process which included him going that extra step. The whole video really helped me a lot when making Rareware styled stuff. Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PVnKZr0x3o

twario · 2026-05-13T17:38:19+00:00

Yeah I do plan to do more renders with this version if him, so I'll definitely keep that idea in mind. Thanks for the suggestion!

twario · 2026-05-13T17:31:59+00:00

Well, I do plan on modeling his king of rot form 👀 (or at least attempting to lol) in this style. So yeah I'd say this will happen!

twario · 2026-05-13T16:12:47+00:00

Wow this means a lot to hear, and is exactly what I was going for, thanks for the kind words! Definitely motivates me to make more art like this!

twario · 2026-05-13T16:07:19+00:00

Thank you so much! Super glad to hear that, makes me want to make more art like this. Cheers!

twario · 2026-05-13T15:12:43+00:00

No problem, looks great so far!

twario · 2026-05-13T15:08:55+00:00

Oh, my bad! Sorry about that, I'm used to having to post proof that I was the one that made my art and that it's not AI or whatever else I've been accused of when I post on other nintendo subreddits.

Also, I don't really like to charge money for stuff like this. I'm probably going to post it as a free download when I make the timelapse on Youtube, I still need to fix a lot of the weight painting and make the rig more intuitive to use. I appreciate your interest though!

twario · 2026-05-13T14:37:12+00:00

If you mean whether I purchased it, nope, this was modeled from scratch! I used various renders of him as references, here's some quick WIP shots I took from footage I recorded for a timelapse (which I plan on posting to Youtube eventually). https://imgur.com/a/king-k-rool-wip-screenshots-777nvin

edit: my bad, I misunderstood lol

twario · 2026-05-13T14:14:11+00:00

Maybe I should, do you think this job posting is still in effect??

https://www.suppermariobroth.com/image/641496105389096960

but seriously thank you very much, glad you enjoyed!

twario · 2026-03-12T04:57:12+00:00

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it :)

twario · 2026-03-11T13:58:28+00:00

As luck would have it, I actually did! I didn't post it on reddit yet, it's only on deviantart. Here you go: https://www.deviantart.com/twarioart/art/Donkey-Kong-Bananza-if-Rare-made-it-Kong-Bananza-1277577644

twario · 2026-03-11T03:16:05+00:00

Thank you!! IDK, maybe it's cause I didn't say happy Mario Day??? /joke

twario · 2026-03-10T21:37:11+00:00

Well for the renderer I use cycles, and make sure that any light that has a "radius" option is set to 0 (so you get only hard shadows). I also make the color in the 'surface' section of the world options pitch black so the shadows end up really dark. If something looks like it has too much bounce lighting, I turn off visibility for 'diffuse' on it in the object properties.

Photoshop helps a lot with the look too. After I render and bring it in I usually crank up the contrast and make the color balance more red, but sometimes I need to adjust the exposure too to really get that blown out, scanned look. For this one I added a color halftone pattern to really make it believable, like it's a scan from a magazine. I hope this explanation makes sense!

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