Julius Saves the Mushroom Kingdom is an old cartoon series of mine, in which the plot revolves around me, The Baron as a hero in a modern-day version of the Super Mario Brothers universe! These early animations were some of my most popular works, as they incorporate many key elements from real historical battles as well as references to famous action films.

Background:

Way back in late 2002, I collaborated with my friend Dave Dissinger on the possibility of us creating a custom ROM game of Super Mario Brothers 3 for NES. Our idea was to make a contemporary version of the game in which the enemies were deadlier, the levels were ultra-violent, and most notably Mario and Luigi were to be re-drawn to resemble Dave and I as we looked when we were teenagers. The title was known as "Julius & Dave Save the Mushroom Kingdom", and in addition to the game's major facelift, our main characters were conceptualized as having jetpacks for flying in lieu of Mario's raccoon tail! Due to our conflicting schedules, we were never able to create the planned co-op game, and instead I decided to make the game solely about me and to rename the project "Julius Saves the Mushroom Kingdom."

Months passed, and into 2003 I put the idea back into the drawing board and opted to make everything in a program called Games Factory. With a broad range of custom pixels, the proposed JSTMK game now was strictly military-themed involving a war in the Mario universe, and the game now included Koopas with guns (as well as a bloody premise). I could never decide which character model to use as the Baron von Brunk player -- such as a mad scientist, a soldier, a western gunslinger or a hitman, and ultimately scrapped the game idea completely.

In early 2005 I began learning Flash, and opted to use it as my dominant medium for making games/animations. In the spring season of that year, I came up with the final idea of resurrecting the plot of JSTMK, only now making it a cartoon series instead of a custom NES-themed online game. The first episode was quite crude and cheesy, but state-of-the-art for my standards at the time. In retrospect it looks amateurish and kiddy, but at the time I impressed my friends, family members and self with the final outcome! I decided to use word bubbles instead of audio and lip-synch, and refused to use any kind of modern pop music* for the soundtrack. Henceforth, all songs played in the JSTMK cartoons are either classical scores or action movie soundtracks. The idea was to make things as serious and straightforward as possible, but being within a cartoony multicolored pixelated world. I wanted to create the idea of normal politics and general rules of war but within a colorful, childish environment.

At the time of the first episode's creation, I was using a particular cartoon character model for myself at age 20, when I looked (and drew myself) compleyely different. This short-looking bearded guy appears in episode 1 in the warp pipe abduction scene. Future episodes were created throughout the course of 2005, with the biggest gap being between episodes 6 and 7. A few of these episodes were given awards on Newgrounds.com, with episode 7 getting 1st place at one point! Episode 7 was also longest to date chapter, where I discovered a timeline limit in Flash animations. The cartoon is 16 minutes long, and was actually trimmed down from nearly 20 minutes! Upon the completion of the last episode, I broke ground for a final chapter -- but soon lost all of my data when my harddrive became corrupted. Suddenly, I was swarmed with a ton of projects (The Trakes videos, the Halloween "SAW" cartoon parody) which made me sort of forget completing the series and ultimately focus on other things.

2007 and 2008 brought an unforseeable chapter into my years as a young adult with a ton of responsibility. I rarely had the time to make animations at all, let alone a final chapter in the JSTMK series. With that said, a final episode of JSTMK will be completed someday, although it has been five years since the first episode has been created! As you watch these episodes in sequence, you'll notice a distinct progression in quality and animation. For instance, in episode 1 the tanks and cannons merely fire the projectiles, however by episode 6, the tanks recoil when blasting, Mushroom soldiers actually fight back instead of running around aimlessly, and cannons emit smoke and muzzle flairs. Also the camera angles and cinematic techniques are more advanced by the time of episodes 6 and 7, as you can see.

*The exception is in episode 7 when I used parts of "Nights in White Satin" by The Moody Blues.