To clear up the Mario pose issues, he's supposed to be resting his hand on the statue and looking up at it in admiration, the hand above his head is supposed to be shielding form the sun. I realized after the fact that the sun's direction makes that unneccessary, but didn't bother to change it.
And yes, those are cliffs in the background.
So assuming i have time to fix this up (laziness and business have been problematic the last couple weeks) the major crits right now are the shading on the pipe in the back and the small Mario (possibly his pose too). I didn't miss anything too important otherwise, correct?