Introduce
“I’m raising my hand as if to say: ‘I’m going to die; someone save me,’” Tim “Fireball” Lawrence said. He’s about to drown in a swimming pool. While wearing Yoshi’s outfit, nothing more and nothing less.
Kathy Lawrence, the costume designer responsible for creating the mascots for dozens of Nintendo TV spots in the ’90s and 2000s, said: “The head is vacuum-formed, but Yoshi’s entire body is dense foam.
“It went from being a 35-pound costume to more than 200-pounds,” Fireball said. “The foam, like a sponge, just absorbed the water and I started to sink.” Mistaking his outstretched hand for a raised thumb, Kathy and her crew got excited as they watched her husband fight for his life underwater.
Fireball has never trained to be a stuntman. He’s been an illustrator, supporting Kathy’s costume business, KCL Productions, since both were fired by Disney in the ’90s. For more than a decade, the pair have traveled the world. world to design mascots for Nintendo commercials, including Super Smash Bros., Animal Crossing, Banjo-Tooie, Kirby, and several Mario spin-offs. Kathy created all the costumes while Fireball quietly wore the pieces she created, acting in almost every commercial they made.
“I suppose I could think of much worse ways,” Fireball said while chuckling, thinking about what it would be like to die on the set of a Mario Party 4 commercial. At the time, he stated that he was more interested in ruining a multimillion-dollar TV show than his happiness.
“Currently [I’m] worried because we didn’t know if we could get the water out the next day to do the shoot,” he continued. “All these people are flying in from all over the planet to do their jobs. And we won’t keep it up. And one thing you learn from working in the film industry is that you’ll never have anyone tell you you’ll never work in this town again; you’re just creating that situation for yourself with something that doesn’t work when you get to the set.
Safety is the crew’s primary concern, but danger is a natural part of the business. In the same commercial, a stuntman flew off the roof on a skateboard in a Mario costume. “You just have to make it work,” says Kathy.
According to the Lawrences, they used the mascot in a way no one had ever done before. The two helped one of the most successful video game companies reach a new generation of kids, who now make up a large portion of the company’s fan base two decades later. And they did it quietly from their backyard in Santa Monica, California.
Icon Design
Icon Design
A few years after starting their company, an advertising agency called Leo Burnett Worldwide approached Kathy and Fireball to work on a Super Smash Bros. Set in The Turtles’ “Happy Together,” the promotional video combines clips of the N64 gameplay with footage of the mascots – Mario, Yoshi, Donkey Kong and Pikachu – brawling across a grassy field. .
A large film crew, led by director Mark Story [Saturday Night Live Season 11], completed a half-day shoot at Walt Disney Studios’ ranch in California. While the production was much less intensive than the later commercials the Lawrences made, this was the first time they worked with Nintendo, which, according to the pair, was very strict about portraying their characters.
“I say this with a fair amount of confidence: Kathy has built hundreds, if not thousands, of mascots since the early ’70s, and one of the most difficult – if not said, costumes. is the hardest – is Pikachu,” Fireball said. “It’s hard because you’re taking the ergonomics of an inch-tall character, like Mario, and then you’re trying to put a human inside the character. And they’re extremely strict, but at the same time, very understanding that the mascots have to have a sense of humor and humor, in keeping with the taste of the game.”
Kathy designed Pikachu to match actress Cindy Sorenson [Star Trek: The Next Generation], who is about 3 feet tall, while a 7 foot tall man wears a Donkey Kong suit. “The little lightning on her back must be perfect. ‘No no. I think you should move it down an eighth of an inch,’” Kathy shouted, mimicking one of the producers they worked with.
Despite the chaos, both described Nintendo and Leo Burnett Worldwide as “incredibly talented, creative and professional people to work with.” Super Smash Bros. has begun a long and fruitful cooperation relationship between the parties.
KCL Productions shuffled a number of actors to find those who were comfortable with mascot acting. Most problems cause or delay on set, citing claustrophobia, heat, and asthma attacks as obstacles.
“After the Super Smash Bros. commercial, I realized that I needed people to try on a costume I designed, so I asked Fireball to try it on,” says Kathy. “And for that, he is very good at knowing how far an outfit can go and how to bring it to life. So for the rest of the commercial, he’s always Super Mario and Yoshi.”
“I just knew that if I wore that outfit, not only would we get paid more, which is a plus, but we wouldn’t have any problems because I wouldn’t complain,” Fireball said.
For many years, due to his contract with Nintendo, he couldn’t tell anyone that he was Super Mario and Yoshi in Nintendo commercials. When filming near a public place, his contract prohibits him from taking off his mask – something he can only do behind closed doors. Following the success of the Super Smash Bros. scene, KCL Productions followed Nintendo around the world, filming on cruise ships in Greece, studios across the United States and Canada, and on the beaches of St. . Thomas.
by land and sea
by land and sea
“We shot a commercial in the Virgin Islands, and it was an enjoyable experience with Kathy, my wife, and her ex-husband, Bob, who played Luigi,” Fireball said of working on “Mario” Vacation,” the codename for a 2001 Super Mario Advance 2 ad. “Bob and I ran down the beach together as best friends dressed up as Super Mario and Luigi. We get along well and we all have a son together, but it’s a surreal experience to be running down the beach in the Virgin Islands as these characters. It gives us some unique experiences.
Although it featured Yoshi running with wildlife in a safari-like setting, which the crew filmed on a horse-powered treadmill in Hollywood, the commercial mainly focused on the swimming mechanics in Super Mario Advance 2 – port of Super Mario World on the Game Boy Advance. Directed by Graham Henman [Anthony Bourdain’s Bone in the Throat], decided to film with an underwater camera to recreate the water level in the game. Kathy crafted two Mario mascots to match the production, designing a standard mascot and another for filming beneath the Caribbean waves.
“We had to build a Super Mario mascot with puffy cheeks [looked like it] can hold their breath underwater,” Fireball said. “I had to get in the water, put my head on, put my mouth around the straw that we attached to the face of the costume, blow bubbles out of the tube, then pull my head out to get some air. That’s a lot of feathers just to get that one shot right.
However, while submerged in water during pre-production, Kathy and Fireball discovered an unforeseen problem with the Mario costume. A material commonly found in boogie boards, L200 EVA foam, covers some of the suit’s body parts, so Fireball’s active buoyancy prevented him from swimming underwater. “We added diving weights to the head and feet to create zero buoyancy, allowing me to swim underwater and blow bubbles out of the mouthpiece without having to push against my head and feet,” says Fireball. rise.
He continued: “There are so many firsts, and it’s exciting to be a part of them because it’s a combination of excitement and terrible fear. “You know you might not make it through the scene and this could be your last day on earth. No one has ever actually put a mascot in a pool and let them swim before. Or in the ocean. I don’t think anyone until Banjo-Tooie ever thought of jumping out of a plane at 12,000 feet while wearing a mascot. It’s not something anyone has done before.”
“I have worked for a lot of clothing companies. And I can say that no one has ever done these things,” Kathy asserts.
Screws
Screws
If there’s one thing Kathy fears on the set of Nintendo’s Banjo-Tooie, it’s breaking someone’s neck.
The premise of the promotional story is to boldly introduce what would happen if Banjo tried to fly but forgot about his bird friend, Kazooie, and it ended with the protagonist crashing to the ground. In fact, they’re creating a live-action cartoon scene. The Lawrences built two versions of the Banjo Kazooie costume: one for parachutists from a moving plane and the other for a six-decker crane that drops down with a 200-pound dummy inside. Kathy worried the weight of the foam head could paralyze the stuntman if something went wrong.
“I said, ‘You tell me what you need: hole in the head or whatever,'” Kathy said. “The guy said, ‘No problem.’ So he did a few jumps out of the plane before putting on the costume but just holding his head. The designer has integrated all standard parachute equipment into the piece, including a special helmet, so that the performer is properly dressed in the event of an emergency.
Back on the ground, the first unit of the crew has successfully dropped the Banjo dummy from the sky and is busy digging a hole that will fit the bear character’s snout. The problem, however, was that the impact broke the inside of the mascot’s head. Notably, Fireball still had to get inside on the final shot when Banjo was face down with a thumbs up. “We threw it aside so many times that all of these sharp shards got into the face,” Fireball said, adding that the spiders also got into the mask while lying on the face. land.
Despite how offensive that description might sound, Fireball remembers that Nintendo understood that the mascots were the stars of the ad, and so the company treated the pair “like gold.”
Passing the Torch
Passing the Torch
Despite the danger, wild stunts, and long days, the Lawrence family sees their decade with Nintendo as creatively rewarding. They describe their associates and clients as just professional and generous to the family run business. Notably, fans still enjoy the publisher’s memorable commercials to this day. Super Smash Bros ad. has reached nearly 5,000,000 views since a copy was first uploaded to YouTube in 2008 by user PSNDarkKnight01.
Fireball said: “Kathy is a prime example of someone who doesn’t question whether anything can happen.
“Our son is a sculptor in the film industry,” says Kathy. “He works on Black Pantherand he’s currently making the movie Star Wars. I said to him, ‘When you’re in a difficult or dangerous situation, or when you have to pour a lot of [at work] – those will be your stories.’ You don’t want life to be just ho-hum, you know? So now he’s holding the torch.”
“We are grateful to be able to participate,” she continued. “And now there is so much love for these traditional costumes. We’ve had so many people contact us about our ads and say: ‘Hey, you should redo those ads!’ That’s great, but you know, you can’t really bring the ’90s back.”
This article originally appeared in No. 356 of the Game Information Provider.
