One of my dearest memories is certainly the one I associate with the day when, at E3 in Los Angeles, I had the opportunity to see Miyamoto San again in a context of celebration for the presentation of the game, with a jolly mood, and no longer in a context of tension, like when I had to present the game for the very first time, and I was betting my future and the future of my team on it. We were both relaxed, smiling, surrounded by many ecstatic and incredulous people at the success of the game we were about to release, and we were all enjoying this moment along with our future players. One year prior to this picture, me and the guy you see in the picture, Gianmarco, the producer of Ubisoft Milan, we decided to bring a present from Italy to Miyamoto san. An original mandolin made by the Calace family.
There’s a story about that. Grant me a bit of time, please, as I need to explain the two reason that led me and Gianmarco (“Giamma” for the closest friends) to why we bought that specific mandolin and why we gave it to Miyamoto san.
First of all, the Calace “Liuteria” lute-making workshop, was founded in 1825 by Nicola Calace, in the island of Procida near Naples, which started producing very nice guitars. The tradition was continued by his son Antonio, who made unique, precious mandolins. He had two sons, Nicola and Raffaele, to whom he handed down all the secret technical skills of the lute-making Art. When he died the two brothers worked together making refined mandolins, but quite soon the undoubted superiority of Raffaele Calace as composer, musician and lute-marker, caused irremediable conflict between the two brothers; therefore Nicola Calace emigratated to America. In the meanwhile Raffaele Calace’s genius kept ascending . He was universally acknowledged and defined as “The Paganini of the mandolin” for the vigor and expressivity of this work, and eceived a great number of official important aknowledgements. In 1924 he went to Japan, on an epic tour, where he had the opportunity to conduct the Orchestra of the Master of the Imperial Court of 80 elements with enormous success. He performed in the presence of the LL.AA. Imperials Hiro Hitho and Consort. The Mikado, very pleased with the beauty of the music, (compositions by Raffaele Calace) of the instrument (Lute cantabile Calace) and his skill as a concert player, wanted to give Raffaele Calace the Commend of the "Japanese Sacred Treasure" as a "motu proprio" ”With splendid decoration of gold and enamel. And this is WHY we decided to buy a mandolin made by the Calace “liuteria”. But, in which way Miyamoto enters in this equation?
Be patient…
During the production of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom battle we worked on many animation scenes. Some of those, were about Rabbids Mario. I always wanted the Rabbid to be an extreme version of their Nintendo counterpart. For Rabbid Mario, I wanted him to be what could have been the typical cliché of an Italian of the ‘50s (Not a real one of course, but a cliché9: someone who always fall in love with every woman, absurdly romantic in any situation (especiall in the worst possible moments), peasant, and someone who love to sing, play an instruments and gesture a lot. Knowing that Miyamoto san had a passion for the Banjo, we decided to give to Rabbid Mario instead a mandolin, to fit better his Italian origin. As usual, all the animations we produced for the game were sent to Nintendo for final approval. and so we did as well for all the scene related to Rabbid Mario playing the mandolin.
One day, out of the blue, we received a feedback from Miyamoto himself that was saying: Rabbid Mario plays the mandolin upside down”. We didin’t know how to react. We didin’t even understood the feedback at start. We only knew that Miyamoto san had a feedback and we were panicking because we didin’t know how to address it.
We started to parse every single frame of every single scene where Rabbid Mario was playing the mandolin. We probably spent one full day on it and everything was looking fine. The error was so big and so in front of us that our minds was not even spotting it. Then, finally, after all panick and the rushing in trying to find the problem, one of the animator finally realized that the Mandolin model was for right handed, but Rabbid Mario was using it left handed. In short, Miyamoto san was able to spot a minor problem on the go, probably in a 10 minute review, where us, the team, couldn’t notice it at all since we started working on those animations and the mandolin model. We then changed the model itself to fit the fact that Rabbid Mario was playing it left handed.
So, after all this mess, we decided to buy a Mandolin for Miyamoto San.