🃁 Link "Ace of Diamonds" - Digital Illustration, Process and Animation

"It's dangerous to go alone! Take this."

Link is the pereniallly mute ("...") yet always courageous hero of the Legend of Zelda series. It is certainly one of the most fun and lovingly crafted game universes of all time, a gorgeous tale of good vs evil but at the end of the day it's all about saving the Princess! This character from Super Mario inventor Shigeru Miyamoto is a reflection of the player, thus you, giving you an array of tools to beat the adventure in your style of choosing. Zelda has existed in so many visual styles already but always remains recognizable at its core as one of the greatest games and stories of all time.

• This is a digital collage of about 43 bitmap layers. Using my mouse and standard Photoshop brushes and layer blend modes. The cards and textures I got from FusRoDa and edited them to suit our needs along with the screenshots, concept art and stencils. I also tried to preserve as many of the steps as possible for the process animation. I then made the animation in Premiere Pro CC, simplified it, sped it up, added inserts, rendered it as an mp4 video file and then converted it to an animated gif online (nifty!) with 25 fps :)

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Category	#FanArt
Medium	Photoshop
Suit	Diamonds
Character	Link
Universe	The Legend of Zelda
Style	Digital Illustration
Original Artists	Shigeru Miyamoto
First Apperance	1987

• Gif Source

  • "After the gods had finished their work, they left the world, but not before creating a symbol of their strength, a golden triangle known as the Triforce. A small but powerful portion of the essence of the gods was held in this mighty artifact, which was to guide intelligent life on the world of Hyrule."

• The Creation of Hyrule
  A Link to the Past Manual

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Lore

Link (リンク Rinku) the main protagonist of the Legend of Zeldaseries. In all games thus far, Link has been descended from the Hylians. In A Link to the Past, Link is said to be the last descendant of the Knights of Hyrule, and as such is destined to rescue Princess Zelda. In many games, he has or earns the Triforce mark on the back of his left hand, either to signify possession of the Triforce of Courage or, in some cases, to simply signify his exemplary courage.

In that way, he was made blank so the human player can fill him with his/her own characteristics, experiences, motivations, feelings, thoughts and emotions. While he is traditionally known as Link, even his name is chosen by the player.[44] This is in order to allow the player to enter this fantasy world and to have an intimate experience with it, and with those who live in it. So, the intention is for his role in dialog and plot to be filled with the words and thoughts of the player, to some extent. His speech is usually replaced with simple and concise answers that the player can pick.

Link also seems to have a particular fondness for sleeping. Most of the games begin with him oversleeping and having to be woken up by some other character. This seems to be done to show that at the beginning of the game he is a regular boy, while by the end he is a true hero.

• zelda.gamepedia

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Process

Here's the animated process for Link that I made out of the individual layers. This is a digital Illustration with some collage elements so I borrowed freely from established imagery for this one. I'm also trying to make a unique transition at the end of each card. Hope you dig it.

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Power, Wisdom and Courage my friends! I can't believe I've almost completed all of the face cards. The Zelda series is one of my favorite things ever and I must admit I'm even sportin' some Triforce Ink ;). Ace of Clubs is up next!

• I also encourage you to come by our Steem Artists Discord Channel. There is a pretty sweet community emerging around @steemartists with talent worth supporting methinks.

  ready for battle,

  ZeroOoC

  

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