Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone, Issue 46 (Patreon)

Welcome, everyone, to the 46th issue of Supper Mario Broth: Special Zone.

In this article I will analyze the color theory behind choosing the Power Moon colors in Super Mario Odyssey.

Please note that due to running into unforeseen difficulties with the preparation of my Supper Mario Broth Supper Show podcast, I was unable to write an article for December 12th. I apologize; as I believe I have been able to resolve all issues, the production of future podcasts will be more streamlined and I will be able to publish both the article and the podcast on those days.

When The Moon Hits Your Eye

The first trailer for Super Mario Odyssey shown at the Nintendo Switch Presentation in January 2017 did not include a look at the game's collectibles, the Power Moons. These were only revealed in the game's E3 2017 trailer:

The segment of the trailer that focuses on the Power Moons shows them in the Sand Kingdom, where they appear a bright green color. Upon rewatching the trailer more closely, other colors of Power Moons can be found hidden in the background in various areas, as well.

When I first saw this trailer, I was intrigued by the differently colored Power Moons. Many ideas were proposed, both by me and other commentators on the Internet. Could the different moon colors have different powers? Could they unlock different levels when collected (a concept explored on a very small scale in Super Mario Galaxy with the single red Power Star and the three green Power Stars, which each unlocked special areas/power-ups when collected)? However, when more information about the game started being revealed in the lead-up to its release in October 2017, it became clear that the colors depend entirely on which kingdom the Power Moons are located in, and otherwise confer no distinctive properties.

Since the game was released, my question has always been: why have those specific colors been chosen for those specific kingdoms? A straightforward way of coloring the moons, if the designers already agreed on having each kingdom's moon colors be unique, is to color them in rainbow order as the game progresses. Another one would have been to give each kingdom a moon color that reflects some aspect of the kingdom. The Sand Kingdom has red sand, so it would be given red moons; the Seaside Kingdom is filled with blue water, so it would be given blue moons etc. 

However, the actual moon colors as seen in the game do not fit these patterns. They appear seemingly random; the Sand Kingdom has green moons despite having no connection to anything green, the Wooded Kingdom has blue moons despite being a green forested area with red mechanical elements and no relation to anything particularly blue except the sky - which of course is blue in most locations; plus, two kingdoms are water-themed and would be more fitting for blue-colored moons in this scenario.

At first I thought the designers chose the moon colors randomly. I waited until the Art of Super Mario Odyssey concept art book was released and translated in 2019, expecting it to shed light on the matter, however, it did not. It merely mentions that moons come in different colors, but does not expand on the process. Upon further deliberation, I have come to a realization (that perhaps was clear to more artistically-minded people all along): the Power Moon colors were chosen based on the visual palette of the kingdoms they are in.

For this article, I will show screenshots of the game's different kingdoms with a palette swatch extracted underneath. To the right of the swatch will be that kingdom's moon color. I will intersperse this with screenshots of a color palette software called Adobe Color (previously known as Kuler) to show how the moon color was chosen from the kingdom palettes based on color harmony considerations. The screenshots were either taken by me in-game or taken from Super Mario Wiki's various sub-pages on Super Mario Odyssey.

First, a word about color theory. The theory of human perception of color consists of more objective aspects (the classification of color based on measurements of the light wavelength, which is independent of the observer), and more subjective aspects like the idea of color harmony, which states that if a scene's palette contains hues that are positioned in different special configurations on the color wheel, it will appear more aesthetically pleasing to the viewer.

One of the most basic ideas is complementary colors. This wheel shows pairs of complementary colors opposite each other; color harmony states that a palette consisting of complementary colors would be more pleasing than one consisting of say, a color and another one a quarter-circle away from it.

More complex applications of this include triad colors, which are each 1/3 of the color circle away from each other, split complementary, which is where one color is paired up with the two colors neighboring its complementary color on each side, and so on. I will bring them up as they become pertinent in this article.

In Super Mario Odyssey, only certain kingdoms have their own Power Moon colors. These include the Sand, Lake, Wooded, Metro, Snow, Seaside, Luncheon, Bowser's and Moon Kingdoms. The rest have generic yellow Power Moons (with the Mushroom Kingdom having Power Stars, which are also yellow and which Cappy calls "star-shaped Power Moons" in this game). As such, I will spend more time on the palettes of the kingdoms with the uniquely-colored moons. There does not seem to be a clear reasoning behind which kingdoms have their own power moon colors, although the general guidelines appear to be:
-Any kingdom Bowser steals an inanimate item from to use at his wedding has colored moons (note that the two kingdoms he kidnaps Peach and Tiara from do not)
-Any kingdom that does not have Purple Coins will have no colored moons

I will first go through all the colored Power Moon kingdoms in order, then finish with the generic ones, also in order. First, the Sand Kingdom:

The Sand Kingdom has green moons. The most striking part of this area is the red sand. We can already see that the green color of the moon is complementary of that of the sand:

However, we can also consider the entirety of the palette of the location.

Here is a typical palette seen in that kingdom:

The kingdom consists of red sand, beige stone, and the blue sky. And these just so happen to line up with the "square" color harmony rule, which picks two complementary colors and then the two colors between them on each side of the color wheel:

(As the software works with 5-color palettes, please ignore the duplicate colors/very similar shades of colors that will appear. Here, the point is to look at the four actually different nodes of the palette; the green appearing twice is a technical limitation.) Note how these line up with the palette of the kingdom. I do not know whether the kingdoms were designed alongside the moon colors, or whether the moon colors were chosen afterwards, but in either case, the way the color harmony rules apply suggest that a lot of thought was put into picking them.

Another color harmony rule is the analogous palette:

This is the analogous palette for red. It is derived from taking incremental steps in both directions on the color wheel from the base color. This also appears in the Sand Kingdom, in the poison areas:

For these, the moon is the complementary color to the base color (red), while the others are analogous to it. This results in the moon standing out even more in these environments:

The next kingdom with a unique moon color is the Lake Kingdom, which has pink moons:

Here is a typical palette in the underwater section (this is the most common view of the kingdom, used in all of the trailers and promotional artwork):

And this matches up with a very subdued, pastel version of the triad rule:

If the designers wanted to make the moons stand out against the light blue water specifically, they would have made them a complementary color to the water, which would be orange. However, they instead use the triad rule to harmonize the Power Moons against both the water and the beige sandstone walls.

The next one is the Wooded Kingdom, with dark blue moons:

At first, this does not seem to follow any color harmony. In the areas of the forest that are more natural and do not contain machinery, the Power Moons do not stand out all that well against the grey and green of the scenery. However, the designers of course had to decide on a single color to be used everywhere in the kingdom, so they harmonized it with the other environment instead, which is filled with orange metal platforms:

And this, yet again, is the triad rule:

Both the greenery and the machinery are one third of the circle away from the blue that was chosen for the Power Moons. Curiously, before I started looking more intently at the palettes, I was under the impression that the platforms were more red than this, but if they had been, then the color harmony would not have worked as well. In-game, the platforms appear more red than they are due to being contrasted with green.

Next, the Metro Kingdom. For this kingdom, I believe the moon color (bronze) was not chosen to contrast with anything:

New Donk City is a very colorful place, and unlike other colorful places in the game that have very deliberately selected color palettes (like the Luncheon Kingdom), here, the colors are more realistic, representative of how an actual big city would have colors without much coordination between them, particularly with the billboards:

In this environment, no Power Moon color would truly stand out. Thus, I believe the designers decided to make this one of the two instances of moon colors that are subdued instead of high-contrast (bronze and the Moon Kingdom's beige being the only one that do not have maximum saturation), to create a different effect than that of the other moon colors, which are designed to stand out:

In the Metro Kingdom, Power Moons are designed not to stand out. 

They have a color very similar to the girders used around the city and many of the buildings. This is my personal speculation, so please let me know if you agree with this theory: in the Art of Super Mario Odyssey book, a recurring theme when discussing the Metro Kingdom is that of creating a sense of alienation in the big city, a sense of not belonging, of feeling lost and overwhelmed. Mario does not fit in with the realistic humans, the architecture is far more toned-down that typical Mario buildings, and so on. I believe the Power Moons not standing out from the environment plays into the theme that in this (comparatively) drab world that reminds us of our everyday lives, even these magical artifacts become commonplace and blend into their background despite their wondrous nature.

This is also underscored by New Donk City actually containing a power plant that runs on extracting energy from Power Moons. This place has taken something that, in other places in this world, is rare and special, and turned it into a commodity, which all plays into the desaturated color of the moons.

The Snow Kingdom has orange Power Moons:

This is a classical example of complementary colors, the contrast of orange and blue:

While a more naive application of this contrast would have put orange moons in either of the two water-based kingdoms, if you look at the color wheel, you will see that the blue that actually contrasts with orange is on the cyan end of the color, bordering on green. The deep blue of water is actually complementary with yellow instead. In the Snow Kingdom, there are only two colors: the white of the snow and the bright blue of the ice, while the water-based kingdoms have richer palettes.

As such, there is no way to use other rules except complementary colors in the Snow Kingdom because there are not enough colors to build any more complex harmony around, and so the orange moons are more or less the only choice here, leaving them not available for the other kingdoms. In short, the orange color was literally all the designers could do while keeping to any kind of color harmony whatsoever.

Next, the Seaside Kingdom with purple moons:

I believe that the "sunset" palette that the Seaside Kingdom assumes after the boss battle against Mollusque-Lanceur is completed is not the palette the moons were designed for. Instead, it is the "noon" palette that the kingdom has upon first arriving in it:

Once again, the triad rule is used to make the purple moon stand out against both the water and the yellow sand:

Note that this is more or less the same concept as already seen in the Lake Kingdom, only more saturated. Just like the purple moons here are more saturated versions of the pink ones in the Lake Kingdom, so too are the water and sand colors.

Now, take a look at that triad rule with purple, yellow and cyan, because it segues smoothly into the Luncheon Kingdom, which uses the exactly same rule, except one of the environment colors and the moon colors are swapped:

Here, the environment (outside of the town and mountain area) is beige and pink/purple, which is contrasted using the same rule with a cyan moon:

Of course, the designers had no choice but to harmonize the moon with this particular environment since the center of the kingdom looks like this:

Against this background, the only color that would in any way be noticeable is deep black, but that was likely not an option for the designers as that color usually implies evil when used on magical artifacts. Perhaps in a possible sequel to Super Mario Odyssey, we will see black Power Moon as an analog to black Power Stars, knows as Ztars, in the Mario Party series. (And if the first letter is mirrored as with Ztars, a possible name for them could be "Woons".)

Next, Bowser's Kingdom, which had red Moons:

Bowser's Kingdom has a skybox that is both very colorful and constantly in motion due to the changing clouds:

As you can see, it already contains red, green, blue and purple, so making anything stand out against this would be very difficult. Ironically enough, yellow would be the color to stand out the most here - not due to color harmony but simply due to being the one furthest away from the rest on the color wheel -  but yellow is already taken by the generic Power Moons and was apparently not on the table for the developers for any of the more significant kingdoms. 

Thus, the developers decided to create a moon color that would contrast not with the skybox, but with the environment itself:

The environment consists of three colors: white floors, black walls and green roofs. Out of these, only green is a hue, and this particular green is complementary to red:

This is as opposed to more yellowish green, which would be complementary to pink  or purple instead. 

Finally, the Moon Kingdom has the last unique moon color, being beige:

This is another color I believe was chosen for other purposes than color theory. Take a look at the Moon Kingdom's environment:

It is completely monochromatic. Any truly saturated moon color would have stood out here. If we disallow any previously used colors, I would suggest chartreuse, or dark green, since the Sand Kingdom used the only type of green moons but green is a large enough color space to have two different shades of it be well distinguishable from each other.

Instead, the designers chose beige because I believe they wanted to reference the color of the actual moon as seen from Earth. It makes sense for the Power Moons on the actual moon to be colored like how the moon appears in the sky. 

Finally, here are the kingdoms that use the generic yellow Power Moons:

The Cap Kingdom fits yellow Power Moons well because despite also being monochromatic like the Moon Kingdom, it has the actual moon in the sky, which here appears yellowish. As such, one could consider the Cap Kingdom's palette to be "monochromatic with a yellow accent", making the Power Moons play into the accent.

The Cascade Kingdom does not have a palette that is harmonious with yellow, as parts of it are already a shade of yellow and it uses both bright green and bright blue, which are at around 1/6 and 2/6 of the color circle away from yellow, making a configuration that does not lend itself to color harmony. I believe that yellow was used here because the Cascade Kingdom is the first kingdom where Mario is exposed to Power Moons, so it makes sense to introduce them as their default color rather than introduce a special color and then reveal the default one later. If I had to choose a color for this kingdom, I would have chosen some shade of reddish orange, as that makes a triad harmony with green and blue.

The Cloud Kingdom is already mostly white, yellow and pink, so adding more yellow here does not make it stand out and was clearly only done because of how few Power Moons the Cloud Kingdom has and how it would have been a waste to develop its own moon color for it.

In the Lost Kingdom, the yellow Power Moons stand out simply because most of its color palette is dark and the Power Moons are bright. 

Finally, for the Mushroom Kingdom, the yellow Power Stars were chosen clearly for nostalgia reasons and not specifically to contrast with the environment.

The Dark Side and Darker Side levels have almost no Power Moons available in their main areas so the colors there are even less relevant than in most locations.

I hope that this color theory analysis was able to be educational and show how much thought was put into creating the visual design of Super Mario Odyssey.

Thank you very much for reading.