Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - Hooktail
Image: Nintendo

Thanks to the release of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door on Switch, we have been quickly reminded of just how much we love the hand-crafted aesthetic. The paper sprites, the craft backdrops, the theatre battle setting — it's all just wonderful, isn't it?

We're hardly alone in this opinion, of course, but YouTuber and crafting wizard JoPro has taken the admiration a step further, recreating the iconic boss battle against Hooktail the dragon in eye-popping stop-motion. And in case you hadn't guessed it, it looks awesome.

According to JoPro, the project took around 11 months to complete, with each character and background needing to be lovingly recreated in textured cardstock. Seeing Mario and Koops remade in such a fashion is one thing, but the real pièce de résistance here is Hooktail herself whose giant head and three-dimensional feet look just as intimidating as they do on the screen.

It's no mean feat (or should that be "mean feet"?) and one that we'd definitely recommend checking out if you have caught the Paper Mario bug over the past few weeks like us.

For those who haven't dived into TTYD yet, you can find our full review of the GameCube remake down below.

What do you make of this stop-motion animation? Let us know in the comments.

[source youtube.com]