Zoras Be Jammin'

 

      It's no surprise that I love Zelda. My favorite entries is a tie between A Link to the Past and Majora's Mask, and my favorite creatures in the series have to be the zoras. This piece was inspired by one of my favorite Zelda songs, "Zora Band," particularly the Mario and Zelda: Big Band Live version. I began this sucker back in 2009, but because of school, I never had time to continue until recently. It started out with a couple reference photos of me and my guitar. Unfortunately, I don't know where those photos have gone to. I then went and did a trace sketch. It looked embarrassing as hell. :S

      Yes, folks. This is the schlock I had spewed out in '09. Just be thankful it wasn't a fully fleshed out version with these wonky proportions. I would never have heard the end of it.
      You can see a bit of ass coming through Japas' (left) scale-flap. This was just to figure out proportions, as vastly improportionate as it already is. ...No, if you must know, I was wearing pants in the reference photos. Actually, in the design stage, I was thinking of a way to tastefully censor him without interrupting the flow of anything, since the zoras are naturally exposed - more so in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. Overall, I just didn't want a the vast majority of the internet comments being about Japas' ass. So I took some liberties, and incorporated parts of the Twilight Princess zoras. You could argue that the zoras didn't evolve these features yet in the timeline, but for this particular instance, I'm letting it slide :)
      Moving, on, I jumped a bit far ahead, and worked on a color layer separation, while tweaking a few proportions. Japas' neck and bass are noticeable changes here. After this, the project hat to remain on hold, until school wasn't consuming so much of my time.

      Two years later, on a Winter Break, I finally returned to this piece, while I still had a bit of school left to do. I had gotten pretty far in it, but unfortunately, the file corrupted. I was pretty upset at the time, but it was a blessing in disguise. It gave me the chance to start almost from scratch, fix even more proportions, and to make it where the two zoras aren't standing so ridiculously close together. In also comes shading/highlighting and the first incarnation of the background. The second iteration came when I decided the characters shouldn't be so close to the frame.

      Around the time I was doing this, I had my oil painting instructor check it out. He gave me some pointers on what I could do to improve on this piece. It had been a long while since I painted anything. Most of what I was doing at the time had to be done in 3D programs. I'm glad I understand 3DS Max and Maya, but I always had more fun, and would have rather improved my 2D painting skills. It took a while for things to click and re-learn what I had lost when I first started college, but that one oil painting class really helped out a lot.

      Here we have what was a placeholder final product. Water light and reflections have been added to the characters, everything has texture, small rocks are coming out of the water to counterbalance the picture, Mikau has a new pick, and we have a new third background. I just didn't like the way the old one was turning out. That, and I changed the aspect ratio to 16:9. The fins also have a new sparkle, based on that of how the original artwork of Japas appeared. I was thinking of adding water droplets, but they were became distracting to the picture.

      Now, a few months later, we come to the latest latest product (up top). Version 1.1, if you will. More detail has been added to the lighting and the rock wall, faint spots have been added to Japas' bass, and the rocks in the water have been replaced. The water collision edges have also been toned down. The one thing I couldn't stand about the image was Japas' head fin, so I made it to where it was over his shoulder.

      ...Well, thank you for sitting through these long ramblings over a silly piece of fan art - over the little tiny details you probably didn't care about. :P Now this may not be the best way to go about doing art in the slightest...but it was a good little experiment, and I learned a heck of a lot by doing this one picture. And with this, I opened up my DeviantArt account.