Like a lot of people my age, I grew up on Nintendo, so Mario was present for much of my formative years. I’d never really given much thought to the fact that Mario, for all his heroics, plies his trade as a humble plumber, and I was amused by the thought of the chubby little Italian guy bleeding the air out of a radiator or cleaning out the discharge pipe under a sink. I tried to create the design in such a way that it you could recognise the character through the context and a few visual cues. All the elements worked out well, and the fact that he has undone his overalls and taken his hat off, adds to the feeling that he has been down there a while and that it is frustrating work. I guess this in itself is amusing, Mario being a ‘superhero’ of sorts. Having taken his overalls off the shoulder set up an opportunity to show off a bit of butt crack – the trademark of any good tradesman. FYI – the fabric colour is much lighter than it looks in the product pics, which were taken under flash light.