A bunch of Link Sketches and WIPs (Katsuya Terada art study + etc)

Hey all, happy hump day. Been drawing Links recently, in case you couldn’t tell. I’ve floated the idea around before a few times about another fan comic and based on the results of that poll I did earlier in the year it seems Zelda was a franchise a lot of people would be down to see.

For me personally, the Zelda concept art of Katsuya Terada has always been the most inspired look in the entire franchise. If you’re unfamiliar with the name, there’s a good chance you’ve likely seen the artwork at least once in your life. His work gets passed around social media once every now and then.

A lot of this art was made for players guides and magazines as a way to advertise the games as an epic fantasy adventure, despite not really being representative of how the actual games look. Still, they remain a curious bit of Zelda history, from a time period before they would start drawing more from anime and less of a Japanese take on western fantasy for the game’s aesthetic.

So, one thing I’d like to make clear in this early pitching phase is that I am definitely NOT trying to make a comic that replicates Katsuya Terada’s art style. Not exactly. First off, I’m nowhere near good enough at watercolors to come close to doing this art style justice. The attached WIPs were made more or less for fun, just me shooting in the dark a little bit and taking jabs at what my version of a classic fantasy look ”might” sorta feel like. I also realize after a bit of experimenting that it would take WAY too long to do a whole comic at that level of detail. So what I am thinking of doing is getting inspired by this concept work and marrying my regular style with a more fantasy aesthetic while retaining that patented Bonerbob “feel”.

Essentially all I’m asking is for you guys to lemme cook for just a bit and I will definitely come up with something that looks and feels really cool and more importantly “unique”.

Anyways, sorry for the long post. Hope you looked at all this and went “Ah yes, okay. Very cool” or something like that and nodded your head.