Twilight Prince (NOT A SPOILER)

Just the graphical musings of a fan on a high. Really, I've been calling the image "implink.jpg" since its inception, but I wanted to put something about the game it's "from" in the title. After I got to the "e" and my finger was hovering over the s key, I thought it worked well enough like this.

Anyway, I can't stress enough that this is not a TP spoiler. Link never takes this form in the game, and the design is of my own creation. This took forever and a day to finish, but I'm very pleased with it, especially given that it's the first thing I've finished in at least half a year. I apologize for the text, I know it's disruptive, but I feel it is regrettably necessary, especially given the popularity of the series and the belief that anything on the internet is public domain. It'll go when I can come up with a half-way decent background.

I just had a really bad scare, where I thought I'd accidentally saved this small, compressed version over the original with all its 400-something MB, 50 layers, and 75% larger size. I just love that sickening sensation where you lose the feeling of your hear beating. False alarm, though. Thank God for that Photoshop feature where deleting every single item in the history list reverts to the original opened file, regardless of whether or not you've saved over it.

MAGICAL EDIT OF RETROSPECT
After submitting this yesterday, Matt suggested I explain some of my choices in the markings, so here goes: WARNING! THIS PART MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS










Firstly, I've already had a couple of friends ask me why I chose to put the wolf markings on his forehead instead of the Triforce, for example. Well, given that this is a Twili-esque form, there, he is the Sacred Beast, and not the Legendary Hero, so I felt the wolfish marking was both more appropriate and was more aesthetically pleasing.

Moving down, we then have the markings on his neck. Well, upon seeing that some of the patterns on Midna represented some of the clothing she normally wore, I implemented the concept into Link's design. The neck obviously represents the mandarin-style collar of his white undershirt.

The chain patterns around both biceps represent the chain mail tunic that pokes out from beneath his green one. In one of the preliminary designs, it was on his legs, too, but that looked bad, so it got nuked. Matt actually came up with that idea.

There's really no rhyme or reason to the ear markings, but the design from the bracer is present on the left arm, though you can't see it that well in this pose.

The last thing worth mentioning is the marking around his left ankle. I realize that this really should have been around his left wrist, but after the bracer there wasn't a whole lot of real estate left on the arm market, and to be honest, I think it looks better around his ankle. If you look closely, you'll see an abstract chain and lock pattern -- Yup, wolf-Link's "paw cuff."

Well, that's why Mie done what she did. Behind the doodles, or whatever.


Whew. Here's to a hopefully more productive 2007.

Link and the whole LoZ crew is © Nintendo, this design is intellectual property of me, and -- Yeah, do I really have to say it again?