As a little boy of two or three, Mike Andreasen began his years’ long fascination with Super Mario, the Nintendo video games featuring mustachioed and overall-wearing hero Mario. He watched his older siblings play Mario Kart on a Nintendo 64 game console for hours.
Now, at 18 and a senior at Elma High School, Andreasen is a Super Mario subject matter expert. Ask him anything and he’ll have the answer — from who voices a certain character to the best way to defeat recurring Mario enemy, the Hammer Brothers.
“Mario has been everywhere and done everything,” Andreasen said. “That’s why I like him. They even shot him into space.”
Through a digital photography class at EHS, Andreasen has found a creative outlet in which to share his love of Super Mario. He has his own cartoon character, DCDawg, based on a combination of Mario and himself. Andreasen hand draws the cartoon, scans the image and colorizes the cartoons using Photoshop.
“It’s cartoony-looking,” Andreasen said of his drawing style. And while DCDawg might appear to be a simple drawing, much work goes into creating it. A ten-panel cartoon may take up to a week to complete.
Another of his comic series features a character named Mr. Mow, a goofball who gets himself into unlikely situations. The character’s face is Andreasen’s own visage, just upside-down.
His teacher, Robert Beldin, said Andreasen was not a typical student.
“Mike sets deadlines for himself and he has a very strong work ethic,” Beldin said. In addition, Beldin said Andreasen is autodidactic, meaning he is self-taught. With very minimal direction, Andreasen has become versed in the software essential to editing digital photographs.
“He’s great to work with,” Beldin said. “You point him in the right direction and off he goes.”
His acumen with Photoshop has enabled Andreasen to help his fellow classmates when Beldin is assisting others. Helping others helped Andreasen to make connections with other students — connections which did not come so easily before. He has overcome some struggles associated with autism. Where he once kept to himself, Andreasen now has friends who share his love of Super Mario and cartoons.
Andreasen is learning how to animate his drawings and has made video tutorials on how to use Photoshop. He posts his creations on a YouTube channel and even does the voices on his animations. Beldin said he could see Andreasen taking his hobby and making it into a career as a video game animator.
“He would be one of those guys who works 12 hours straight,” Beldin said. “And he wouldn’t do it for the money — he’d do it because it’s what he loves.”
