I'm one of those weirdos who thinks Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is a great game. And, recently, I started wondering what that game's rendition of Link would look like in the more modern, cell shaded, three-dimension style you'd see in something like ​Breath of the Wild.

The image to the left is how Link appeared in Zelda II's manual. I worked up some character sketches based on this image that I could create a model from, which can be seen below.

As opposed to Link's more recent console look, the early Zelda  games have a really unique visual identity for their protagonist. In particular, Link is a lot leaner here, his hair is very shaggy, and his ears are much more upright. He also has very oval eyes and a long, cylindrical nose. An interesting part of this little exercise was seeing what would translate into 3D well, and what I would have to tweak.

This is where I wound up with the project. I ultimately decided to forego the lines in the original illustration since modern Zelda games don't include lines in their cell shading, but I think the two-tone toon shader is a nice replication of the colors from the drawing! 

There are definitely still some things I'd like to work on a bit more (should I ever pick this back up). The model is a pretty dense mesh that could stand to be optimized (though the topology is pretty sound). I also found that the hair in the illustration was extremely difficult to translate straight to 3D, so I might take another stab at that someday. And, little details like the cross stitching on the shirt's collar and lashes around the upper lid for definition would be ideal. Still, I think this offers a solid base, and I'm satisfied to get an idea of what a 3D Zelda II could potentially look like.

Oh, and just for kicks, I also modeled out the game's first boss, Horsehead. Didn't get too far into the texturing phase, but I think this gives a pretty solid idea of where things could go!

The game looks incredible overall, and my hats off to Capcom for developing what looks like a seriously robust engine. Can't wait to see what else they're able to do with it!

While I do a lot of 2D artwork, I'm also adept in 3D as well. In particular, I've found 3D an awesome tool for doing mock-ups and layouts that will ultimately end up in 2D. In my current work at Zynga, for example, it's pretty common that I'll generate background scenes in Maya that I'll send to our outsource team for digital paint over work. The time saving 3D provides at a base level for perspective, lighting, and form is invaluable in a deadline driven production!

As such, I'm always on the lookout for interesting ways of further integrating 3D into my 2D workflow, which is where ZBrush's 2019 release got my attention. Of course, the obvious champion of this release is the new folder system for subtools (bless you, Pixologic). However, equally touted at release are "Rendersets," which essentially put a non-photoreal filter over your sculpts. I'm generally pretty wary of these kinds of features, having encountered way too many plugins and filters that come up very short of providing the convincing results advertised ("Turn your photo into a line drawing in just one click!"). However, ZBrush's Renderset showreel looked interesting enough to try.

A while back, I had been doing a sculpt of X-Men villain Omega Red. While the sculpt never came close to completion, it was far enough along where I could use it as a guinea pig to test out the Rendersets. Particularly, based on his comics origins, could we at least get in the ball park of comic style line art?

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While I can't say I was floored by everything I tried, the results from the "B&W Thin Line" option wasn't half bad!

What really impresses me here is how nicely the filter picks up fine lines and details, like the creases around the eyes. It also does a really nice job defining areas that are still a little muddy in the sculpt, like the ears. And, there is a real distinction in line weight in contours vs internal edges. While it's not perfect, I could definitely see this being a viable base for some clean-up and tweaking in Photoshop. And, of course, it definitely makes me interested to see what the results would be from a more complete sculpt that is both more polished and created specifically with this Renderset in mind!