Kyozo Kicks

Models of Mother 3 – Camille Young Interview Prt 1.

The Work Of Camille Young.

Let me take a moment to give you a quick and brief background on the Mother 3 Fan Translation (See here for the full story). Mother 3 is the third game in the Earthbound  series from creator Shigesato Itoi. Originally set for release on the Super Famicom in 1994, it finally arrived in April 2006 (over a decade later) at which point the SNES was long gone and the Gameboy Advance became Mother 3′s eventual home. After 7 months of waiting patiently for word of an official release outside of Japan fans decided to take matters into their own hands through Do-It-Yourself Devotion.

The initial plan was to take a Japanese RPG (A text heavy game) hack the ROM and translate the entire game into English. Not a project funded by Nintendo or a third party – This came out of a love of the game. I’m sure as many of you are aware they succeded with their goal, we now have an English Mother 3 to play (here) They succeded where many felt Nintendo failed.

Which brings me to why I am writing this and why I contacted Camille Young. Mother 3 went beyhond just the game, It has it’s own English Website & forum, Walkthroughs, Soundtracks and an offically unoffical players guide. This is not the kind of guide you would find on GamesFAQ but a real, 240 page bound book. Written by the fans including illustrations (over 450 of them) and over 50 clay models which were created and photographed by Camille Young.

KK : For those who might not be aware, what was your contribution to the Mother 3 translation?

CY : I didn’t have much to do with the Mother 3 Fan Translation other than, “One two three, go!” but I made the clay models for the Mother 3 Handbook There were 46 models in all, plus one painting and one illustration. In all, they took me about 600 hours to do.

KK : Were you aware at the start of the project just how many models it would finally involve? how do you feel now that your finished and the reaction to your work?

CY : I didn’t have any idea how many models I would need to make initially. I had a long list of characters to start out with, and some were added or subtracted as the book was written. It would have been impossible to make them all in the alloted time, so I just went with the bosses, main characters, and various items like the dragon needle. I made a few figurines near the end that were added to the list and finished last minute: King P. statue, Chimera Lab monster, and Magypsy house.

I feel really honored to have worked on this project (especially with Jon Kay, Emilio Orsi, Sebastian Hardy, etc.) because the EarthBound guide was such an inspiration for me. Every MOTHER game so far has had official clay models of the characters in the guides, and Mother 3 had no official art for some reason.

KK : How did you find yourself sculpting models? Are/ were you an art student, self taught?

CY : My mom gave me some play-doh and modeling clay when I was 3 and I’ve been sculpting ever since. I took some art classes in high school and went on to Pima Community College for an associates in Fine Arts. I didn’t do a lot of sculpting for school, but I always had a clay project to work on in my spare time.

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Join me towards the end of the working week when I wrap things up with Camille. If I may take a moment to urge you to Buy the Mother 3 Handbook and pay a visit to Camilles blog here. I have not yet had a chance to play Mother 3, Ideally I would like to play it on a GBA (I bought a NES last year just to play the games as they were intended) So once I get a moment I’ll figure out how to do that!