This is easily one of my favorite characters. Ganondorf is the classical evil enemy, greedy and seeking to conquer all the land, and bound everyone to it’s will. The gerudos are an interesting race in terms of visual and i always wanted to paint this fire head dark king. My first encounter with him was on Ocarina of Time, and i remember like if it were yesterday, Link and Zelda spying on the king’s court window and seeing this man pretending to be a king’s ally, on his knees, and then suddenly he turns his head to the camera and sees you.

That gave me the creeps when i was a kid. That pure evil look, seeing through your soul with that cynical smile on his face. That is what i tried to represent here. Ganondorf is power on the triforce, brute force, so he needed to be massive in a way. The background needed to be almost pure black, like if he is emerging from the darkness over a flaming ground. His pale face is something very odd and terrifying too but i really wanted to give that red-dark light feel to represent his evilness, so when you see his face, it’s covered on a malice red light. This is not the guy you’ll want to mess with. That wraps up the first set. I hope you like it!

This portrait was interesting, and i learned a lot from it. In general i’m trying to exercise different lightning settings in all portraits, and on zelda i went for the theme of light. Zelda represents the wisdom, and of course light, the essence that bans all evil. So i tried to do something with a more exposed enviroment, rays of light shining into her, depicting her like some elevated entity. One of the most interesting elements in this fairy tale-epic- fantasy journey that is every zelda game, is that female characters are not always submissive, specially zelda. So she is wise, but strong too so i made a posture that could express that subtle fierce attitude, looking up. Some suggestions of palace interiors at the back and wrapped it up. Hope you like it!

This was a project i’ve been working for some months now, on my spare time from illustration projects, and i’m finally happy to post them here. Zelda series helds a precious spot on my beloved childhood memories, and i’ve growned into a devoted fan since my first encounter with zelda, on a stormy night, waking up from a call  in turbulent dreams in A link to the past. I turned 25 this year, just like the game, and i realized i had to try something epic to pay homage to my favourite game.

I’ve always wanted to do fan art, specially Zelda, and now is the perfect time to start. As all Zelda fans, i always imagined what would be like if zelda characters were real, what would they look like? So i decided to do a series of portraits. I’m not trying to convey what Link or Zelda should look like, i’m only doing an imagination exercise, a very pleasure one. To think of realistic approaches. In a way, i’m merging my love for zelda with a very good illustration exercise. My goal is to do a lot of characters, making specific sets. I just finished the three main pillars: Link, Zelda and Ganondorf. I used, and i intend to use for the next pieces Twilight Princess as a visual reference, since it has a more realistic style. Although the objective is to cover Ocarina of Time main characters first. The next set is gonna be the Six Sages. Just like in the game i had great fun playing, i’m gonna have that now, revisiting all those characters again, and hopefully improving my skills on this journey.

Link

Going through this portrait i realized how much Link reseambles Peter Pan. The elf fairy tale look, in a mixture with an adult Peter Pan (considering Adult Link of course). Specially when you try to draw a realistic fairy beside him, then you start to see Peter Pan and Tinker Bell more clearly. When i thought about his expression i did a lot of ideations, trying to find what felt like the right one. The funny thing is that Link is really too neutral, and that was and still is one of the major choices regarding gameplay from Mr. Myiamoto. It’s easier to feel empathetic to him, and i always liked that. Link represents courage, and the will to keep going, so i tried to imply some subtle courageous look, but still neutral, not a exaggerated fierce look, proud, cocky, nothing like that.

I thought it would be also nice to have a suggestion on the background, to give scale to the picture and give more complexity than a simple plain color. Had great fun doing this. Hope you like it!

Hey everyone. It’s been quite a while since the last post. I’m under some NDA contracts so i won’t be able to post anything anytime soon, so i figured it out it would be nice to post something different. Halloween is always a great time of the year, specially regarding movies. I’m a horror movie fan so decided to pay some homage doing a digital painting. Although we don’t have the massive halloween atitude here in Brasil,i always had great time scaring people on the streets with cheap masks (which i still own till this day btw) and watching horror movies as a kid. Such fond memories. We just don’t forget the first time we see Michael Myers. Anyways, here’s the painting.

Generally what i do is sketch with a broad squared brush. That keep me away from detail until i get the right feel for design, composition, and the overall result. Then i generally start making some outlines on a different layer so i can keep track of more intricated design and details. Then i start to refining that all on b&w until i think i reached a satisfactory definition. Then i’ll use 3 kinds of layer mainly:

1. Color layer – So i can start adding color without losing the value i created underneath.

2. Multiply layer – This helps a little bit more the value in order to create a more precise lightning effect, cast shadows, etc.

3. Overlay layer – This gives the real sense of lightning and if its used wisely can create very realistic atmosphere, adding light as well as some saturation to the color.

After that is panned out is only a matter of mainting the qualities of the values, the sketch and adding details and interesting elements. Hope you like it and maybe find this brief tutorial somewhat useful. Had great time doing it. Happy Halloween!