EPIC Zelda 25th Anniversary Painting (56K slow)

[Dalton]

Click here. 960 by 5253 pixels of awesome.

Don't believe me? Take a look at the wallpaper-sized crop I made.

More info here.

[Agent Fisher]

Holy shit, that is epic.

[Big Orange]

That's very, very good. Paintings are bastard hard.

[Vehrec]

It wasn't exactly...painted.

[HeadCreeps]

That's really splitting hairs. The picture was made in a program called Corel Painter, which is a well-known program for simulating the process of creating art in the same way as traditional non-digital mediums. It's far, far closer to the "real" thing than programs like Photoshop. Unlike PS, it goes out of its way to create the same brush strokes as pencils, pens, sponges, brushes of various kinds, etc. Also unlike PS, when you apply color to your picture, it mixes in the same sort of way with the preceding colors as it would in a real painting. The main differences in the technique are greater control over mistakes (CTRL+Z!), an annoying tendency for the program to crash for no good reason, and the digital pen being functionally* different from a brush. Painter is what most of the more successful traditional artists use these days in Japan, if not over the world.

*=an expensive tablet or cintiq allows for a lot of the same functionalities as real brush strokes, depending on your settings.

[salm]

How is this anything different than painting? It even fits the dictionary definition for the completely pedantic types.

[Iroscato]

Wow, that is some fine work. So what if they used a program? It's the 21st century and it still looks brick-shittingly epic.

[Sarevok]

It is amazing what modern digital technology can do in hands of a skilled and talented person.
I would say computers empower artists rather than merely acting as a crutch.

Therefore I say hats off the artist for the sheer beauty of this artwork that encapsulates the essence of such a legendary videogame series !

[Seggybop]

It may sound silly, but I wish there was a larger resolution version available than 960px wide. The lowest resolution to viably print something like this at would be 150dpi, and it'd only be around 6" wide. 6" x 35" long, but that's not really a lot when you have a 60" x * printer that you can use at will. =/

[Big Orange]

There's a lot of good Zelda artwork out there, both fanart and concept/production art. I especially like Katsuya Terada's concept art for the earlier NES/SNES/Game Boy games and this guy who drew all the Zelda 1 baddies.

NeoGaf has an excellent thread on Zelda related artwork (which includes the Japanese fanart posted by Dalton). Here are my favourites:

[HeadCreeps]

My god, whoever drew this is my fucking hero. The sense of movement and force is just absolutely beautiful, even though not everything makes perfect sense.

I have to say, Zelda is really good at inspiring art from an extremely wide variety of different styles.

[LadyTevar]

My god, whoever drew this is my fucking hero. The sense of movement and force is just absolutely beautiful, even though not everything makes perfect sense.

I have to agree about the sense of movement and power. I can see Link blocking a deadly attack, the force shoving him back; yet the scene allows you, the viewer, to imagine who/what might have thrown the attack. But who threw it is really unimportant, as the painting is about the determination and courage to face and stand against the attack.

It's now my desktop, btw.

[HeadCreeps]

Well put! That type of picture is of the sort I can only dream of putting forth; it appeals to the viewer both in the aesthetic sense and on a far more base, emotional level. Perhaps it speaks of my own personality that I found myself thinking the shield should be tilted at least a little.

[Big Orange]

I'm most impressed by the Heavy Metal style artwork of Link and Hyrule by Japanese artist, Katsuya Terada.

Here's my Zelda related doodling: