Avery: I am someone who personally never does fan-art, but for once I decided to give it a try and see what would come of it. I created a fan artwork inspired by the brand new Legend of Zelda game: Tears of the Kingdom. You may be surprised to know that I have not played this game, I personally just don’t have time for video games. But I’ve always loved the legend of Zelda series, and in my personal opinion, the Zelda series has some of the best fantasy character design out there. It is constantly unique and memorable. Especially the recent Breath of the Wild series of video games. But the entire series always had great art, every game had a unique visual artstyle associated with it, and I think that really makes the Zelda series unique because of that.

As I said earlier, fan-art is not something I ever do, but I think it is important to have fun with art, and sometimes when you’re not inspired to create something of your own, one should take inspiration from another source. I think fan-art has it’s benefits, and allows people to have fun with drawing and painting. And it is a great way for one to study designs and illustrations from other artists. In a previous essay I made about building community as an artist, I never mentioned how fan-art is actually a great way to connect with fellow artists on the internet. You can bond with other creatives over a franchise or series you love, and that is a great way to make a connection with other fellow artists on the internet.

You do not see it in the video, but I would constantly be looking at reference from the game when creating this piece, I’m not familiar with the character designs from Tears of the Kingdom enough to be able to draw them from just memory, that would just be crazy to do! Always make sure you have reference images to work with. Some people think using reference is cheating but it is not, especially when you’re trying to replicate character designs. If you have any doubts about using reference, please don’t, studying from photos or artists work is a necessity to becoming a better artist. When working on this piece I struggled with trying to copy the design of Link’s arm, it is so intricate, that even with reference it was difficult replicate.

My painting process always starts in black and white or gray-scale so I can focus on values and lighting. I then color the image using blending modes like Overlay and Hardlight. It can be very overwhelming to have to deal with color early in the painting process, at least for me, so that is why I keep it as one of the final steps in the process, though I often can’t help but begin the process of adding some color before I’m done rendering the black and white image. Speaking of rendering, you’ll notice throughout my painting process that I’m constantly adjusting the size, position and shapes of the different elements in the image to make sure the composition and proportions of the characters feel just right, this to me is one of the most important elements to creating a good image, you’ll be making all these little micro adjustments to maybe the face of a character or their pose to make look right. This is something that comes with practice, and training your mind’s eye for these little details.

I tried to take inspiration from the tears of the Kingdom concept art and replicate the painterly style, I noticed how much you could see the brush strokes in the concept art, and it gives the art texture, and tried to replicate that effect where I could. The composition of this image was completely my own, I knew I wanted Rauru at the top of the image taking up most of the visual space, with link in the front and center, and Zelda to side in prayer. I thought about adding Gannondorf to the cast of characters, but I felt that would clutter the image a bit too much. Honestly I wanted to include the entire main cast of characters from Tears of the Kingdom, but I knew that would be a ton of work and I really didn’t want to spend that kind of time and effort on this piece.

I want to note that Link’s new arm is on the wrong side of his body, I did not intend for that, but after flipping the image multiple times I ultimately preferred the composition when flipped and decided to keep it that way.

Overall, I’m really happy with how this piece turned out, and I had a lot of fun making this artwork, and I believe that is what is important, having fun with art. No matter if you are an amateur artist, still learning, or a professional artists making art as their job, you need to enjoy the process and the journey of making art. So have fun, focus on making the art you enjoy, and by doing that, you will make better art.

As an artist, what are some of your favorite video games? While I don’t play video games much anymore, I respect the medium as a true and valid artform. What video game world felt creative and unique to you?