A Decade of Art 2010-2020

Ok so I don't have anything for 2020 yet, but I wanted to take a look at some of my old art and pick a personal favorite from each year. I'll give a brief description for why I picked each one for those who care. This isn't a matter of popularity or any particularly specific criteria. This is just a list of my favorite artwork from each of the years in the last decade.

2010 - Forest Temple Entrance: This is one that I technically went back and updated at one point, so it's much better than it originally was. But I updated it because I really liked it then and I still really do. Saria is one of my favorite characters from Ocarina of Time and the Forest Temple is one of my favorite dungeons so this scene is a combination of two of my favorite aspects of that game. This was back when I was still fairly new at making stuff in 3D and yet despite that, I feel like it holds up pretty well.

2011 - River: This was one of my first original (as in non-Zelda related) scenes. It was based on a place I had passed on my way to school every morning and I always thought it looked very pretty. It was the first time I felt inspired by something in real life aside from Zelda to make something.

2012 - Landscape: This is another one of my original ideas. I just really liked the look of it after messing around in Bryce. It wasn't a very involved or detailed scene, but I really liked the way it looked then and I still do.

2013 - Inside the Moon: This one is (at least as of the time I'm posting this) my most popular scene that I've ever done. It's a recreation of the area inside the moon from Majora's Mask. I specifically remember seeing this art being used in a post on a Zelda fansite (I think it was either Zelda Dungeon or Zelda Universe) and I felt so proud of that. I actually wonder if I could do this better now, but I'm not gonna promise anything.

2014 - Inside the Forest Temple: So remember how I said the Forest Temple from Ocarina of Time is one of my favorite dungeon? Well here is another scene based on it. I enjoyed making the area look all mossy and fit the style of the Forest Temple as well as incorporating the painting of the Poe sisters. I also really liked the way the lighting came out in it, with the yellowish light from the lantern and the blue glow from Navi creating a nice sort of contrast on Link.

2015 - The Ancient Castle:  I like this scene a lot because of some of the Photoshop work I did in it. I didn't think to add the banner when I first rendered it and I couldn't add the rain in Bryce at all. So I added them in Photoshop and I remember putting a lot of effort into making the banner look believable in the scene. I feel like it actually came out really well and still holds up today.

2016 - Killing Monsters: This was the year that I had to switch from using Bryce, which I had been using for all my scenes previously, and switched over to using Daz Studio. I feel like I got the hang of it pretty quick and while there were some drawbacks, I think it came with a lot of good. For this one, I had recently played the Witcher 3 and also recently gotten a model that was based on Geralt so I was really excited to use it. I really liked the result and how much I was able to make the background look like swamps of Velen.

2017 - Iysatar's Laboratory: D&D has given me a lot of ideas for scenes and this was one from my first campaign as a DM. I put a lot of detail into this one and really tried to set the scene for what I imagined the area I described in game to look like. It took a lot of time to make and probably just as long to render, but I think it was totally worth it. I know most of my original stuff doesn't get very popular on here, but I'm still really proud of this one.

2018 - Erylise: By far, she is my favorite character that I designed. I created a custom set of runes and had to modify the shaders for the model, as well as make new ones, to get them to appear and glow on her skin. I also really liked the backstory for her character and how she worked in my game as well. Overall, I have a lot of good memories with the character so while there were a lot of good choices for this year, I'd say Erylise is absolutely my favorite.

2019 - Don't Ever Forget Me: Last year was a slow year for me. Admittedly, I've gotten progressively slower with each passing year, mostly due to life responsibilities. It's a shame and it means I didn't have a lot to pick from for this one. But out of the one's I did do in 2019, I really liked this artwork for Link's Awakening. It's not often I do 2D art for fun and even less often that I develop it far enough that I feel it's done. But this one was actually something I managed to finish working on in a relatively short amount of time and turned out really nicely. It's a different style than my usual 2D art and was a nice experiment for me. 

So there are my person favorites from the past ten years that I've been posting on here. Some of them aren't that popular in comparison to others from the same year, but they're the ones that I'm particularly proud of regardless.