A Link between...two...Links?

Cel Shaded Link

Painted Link

So I thought of an exercise that I wanted to try out.  I had the urge to both draw Link and do a picture with cartoony cel shades (which I'd never really done before).

What I ended up doing was finishing the picture on top in that style - using 100% opacity on my brush, leaving all the line work, and not blending anything together.  The process was kind of annoying at times because of the limitation of not blending, mainly because it was outside of my comfort zone.  Because of all that, I thought it might be cool to repost the picture with a paintover in a more realistic style (and some slight editing on the background).  That's the one on the bottom.

I like both styles in different ways - the one on the left is more storybook/cartoon looking, and the one on the right has greater contrast and pops certain things out more.

Mario and Yoshi redesign

A long time ago I was challenged in a class to redesign one or more characters from Mario Bros. as an exercise.  I found sketches of Mario and Yoshi (which might find their way on here in a second) again and painted them up in Photoshop just for the heck of it.  What I was going for was more of a literal interpretation of Yoshi and a Mario that looks more like a stereotypical plumber.  I thoroughly enjoyed doing it, especially the background.

-Photoshop CS5
-Wacom Bamboo tablet

Attack of the Demon Bunny

Yeah, I know it's horrifying. Here's the deal - I was given the task of mashing up 3 random pictures. Here are the links for the 3.

#1 -  http://chaes1126.egloos.com/photo/album/72645/1758980
#2 -  http://chicho21net.deviantart.com/art/Killer-Rabbit-100685977
#3-   https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif4c6xjwF7aOwMAVXYG86DsD1aDci3s5WyZj2S3_srqWGKdfwNdPpL29xQq7ELVlyHmnjvpNhh1dar2WaKdq0ab2HpWo3KMVTz5VvgnO_7xQ2pjeAQDzhjMySY5bkppJEDT-bLa8GlSx8/s1600/PG1_3.gif

I mixed the fire beast thing with the evil bunny, and the guy with the sword from #3 became the protagonist. The composition is loosely based on #2. I'll probably tweak the background shortly, but at this point I wanted to move on to my next project - so I decided to post it. I had lots of fun with this thing. Kind of reminds me of a boss in Zelda.

edit: 9/28/2012 - changed the background and cleaned things up like I said I would. Hope you like it.

Lost Woods, Master Sword

When I finished that last post, I felt like drawing a forest scene.  It started out as a speed painting, and as I was fine tuning the thing it seemed like the Master Sword should be there because it reminded me of the Lost Woods from Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.  So this was the end result!

Frog / Glenn

Did this while I was playing Chrono Trigger.  So what if the game is 16 years old?  I think we should make it a law to play through it at least one time a year - that's how great it is.  They just don't make 'em like they used to, that's for sure.  Here's Frog with the Masamune....'nuff said.