Zelda 2 comic sneak peek

I took out my old full-length Zelda 2 comic draft and chose a segment to make a short comic out of. It's missing context from the whole grand narrative of the entire story, but I think it gets the point across.

There were a couple potentials, and I ended up choosing the scene where Link discovers that his blood is the key to awakening Ganon. It's the most well-known plot point of the game in the LOZ fandom in general, besides the Prince of Hyrule plot. Throughout the comic, Link gets attacked by various monsters during his quest. He thought Hyrule was incredibly dangerous for merchants and travelers, but found out that it was only him encountering monsters at a high rate, thus targeted (that is not discussed in this short comic). This disturbs him a lot. And this is the scene when he discovers why he's a target. It's more than the monsters seeking revenge.

At some point in the game, the player is made to travel towards south-western Hyrule and use the Hammer on dueling peaks to enter and get a magic potion. You specifically enter the peak that is originally Level 9 in Zelda 1. I found that to be very... interesting. And suspicious. Why did the developers think "Okay lets have Link go back to the traumatizing final boss place from the first game to retrieve an item :D" It's kinda epic honestly and it gave me the idea: For the full comic, I made it that Link follows rumors and travels down there in the hopes of finding the magic book containing the revive spell, which is game-changing for the rest of his journey. Being the adventurer that he is, Link takes the risk and goes there thinking the place is long-abandoned and that Ganon probably no longer exists. Except, that isn't the case. (Okay I must add, after the revelation, Link loses his adventurous spirit and gets very serious with his quest. No longer enjoys exploring, which is all this Link is about. He starts developing Big Fears. This eventually spawns Dark Link. I wish I could make the entire comic but I know I can't T-T I should probably finish up and polish the draft and post it online for whoever is interested in a deep dive, lore-intense Zelda 2 story reimagining.)

It's the first time I do a 10 page comic, so I'm going through a learning curve right now xD It's going to be experimental, but I hope you enjoy it still. Here are some WIP shots. Still a while before it's completed.

A request for something a little different than usual 🍑👑

Progress stuff below:

I haven't done progress shots in a bit and I think it's something I want to do more often because I like talking and blogging I guess haha.

Now that I have more experience illustrating digitally, this kind of direct reference drawing is MUCH easier to do digitally 😫honestly this felt like a self imposed challenge lol. BUT I did want to do some more traditional stuff because I feel that I had been doing a little too much digital, if that makes sense. It's nice to play with my markers and color pencils once in a while too!!

Doing the line art on this piece ESPECIALLY felt easier to do traditionally than digitally. For some reason, trying to do line art on a tablet screen feels too smooth or slippery or something. Lining traditionally feels easier, probably because I put so much pressure on the paper in the sketch phase that when the lining phase comes next, it feels like I'm just following the lines on the page like a train on a track ^_^

despite uploading a couple of illustrations colored with marker now, I still feel a bit like a novice when it comes to marker. I got a new pack of markers that I wanted to play with, which was even more motivation to return to paper for a bit. But honestly, I feel like I fudged the window color blending. I watched tutorials and stuff on blending with markers but I guess I still need more practice ^^;;; at least it looks a bit messy to me. This is how this piece came to be a mixed media illustration, since I tried using color pencils to make that transition from blue to green on the windows a little smoother.

I think the pot holding the piranha plant came out a tad too saturated and it's calling too much attention compared to the very light floor and dresser. I was trying to follow the colors on the reference closely as an easy re-intro to traditional art, but next time I do something like this, I think I'll take more liberties with color and see what happens.

Overall, I'm quite happy with how Peach turned out. I don't draw humans too often since I typically draw Sonic characters lol. Sometimes it feels like I have to re-teach myself to draw people as a result. I really liked using the gelly roll for the highlights on her face and the polka dots on her shirt :3 I highly recommend using that pen as my previous experiences with other white gel pens don't compare to this one (not to sound like a commercial I'm just really happy it worked as well as it did!).

And finally, although redrawing a creation from a dress up game screenshot is probably not the most imaginative exercise I could be doing with illustration, I think it's fun and it's pushing me to do things outside of my comfort zone. I'm using new art tools (I'll get better with marker I prommy) and I drew a background! I'd like to do more backgrounds like this as a practice to encourage more original stuff. Maybe. One day. Probably.

If you read all of this until the end, thank you! Have a wonderful day, and thank you for following me and supporting my art :3c 💝