Zelda Breath of The Wild Collaboration with James Art Ville

Prepare for the mash up of the ages. Photo manipulaton and illustration squished together in the form of an epic Zelda picture!

You will never find a more die hard Zelda fan than @jamesartville. I've known him for 12 years, and his passion for the Zelda series has not declined in the slightest. As an artist, he's drawn countless Zelda/Link pictures, and has probably played Ocarina of Time only 100 times or so. I can not say that I measure up as a Zelda fan. But, Ocarina of Time, will always be one of my favorite games. Sentimentality is big with me. And you can't get more sentimental than Zelda.

I don't remember if this collaboration was mine or James' idea. But one of us said we should make a picture. I'd do the background. He would make the character, and we would try to make them look like a similar style. So while James is writing about his half of this project, I am writing about my half. In the end of both our posts, you will get to see the finished project. :D

All my projects begin with a stock photo, either from Pexels, a site with free photos, or from Adobe Stock a site where you have to pay but are more likely to get the photos you want. James and I were thinking of doing something from Breath of the Wild, probably an old temple or something, so I headed on over to adobe stock. Got this here old structure!

The first building by itself wasn't quite what I'd envisioned. So I set this second building inside, to make it look like it had more depth. Then I slapped on a triforce. The longest part of the process was putting the plants on the building. For this I went to Brusheezy, downloaded the plant brushes, and manually put in all of the plants. I was so meticulous about this, and didn't really think about the fact that once we added the watercolor effect, most of the plants would just turn into colorful blobs.

Ta-da! Lookin' pretty good, eh? For this water color effect, I followed a video tutorial step by step until my picture looked like it had been painted on paper! If you take a glance at the tutorial, it may look complicated, but when you do it one little step at a time, it is actually easy and fun!

Now for the moment you've been waiting for....... James's addition to the picture.......

What do you think? I'm feeling pretty good about this. I would definitely like to do a collaboration like this again. Maybe Mario next time? Well, if you liked this post and would like to hear more about it from James's perspective head on over to his page!