Link's Awakening

Link with the Master Sword

Okay so this sprite is actually not from Link's Awakening -- it's from A Link to the Past -- but since I haven't done much painting in the past 6+ months, the title felt appropriate.

This is the second installment in a 3-sprite series I'm doing for decor in our basement. The first was the Samus sprite I made for my husband's birthday back in September - after that, he asked if I could to a couple more iconic SNES images to hang up in our retro gaming-themed basement: Mario's salute upon level completion from Super Mario World, and Link hoisting the Master Sword from A Link to the Past. It's taken me a good long minute to get back to painting, but I figured this would be a good one to ease me back into it.

The first thing that threw me off was the size of the pixels - I figured it should be the same ratio as the Samus sprite, if they're all going to be together - but Link is just so..tiny! By comparison. Also, I couldn't quite get a good measure on exactly how big the pixels were on that one, even using a ruler. It seemed like maybe 0.4cm x 0.4cm, but not quite...so at the end of the day I went with 0.5cm x 0.5cm and called it good. Size-wise I do like it, though Link is definitely still quite a bit smaller than Samus and I'm not sure how they'll look together on the wall. We'll find out once I get it framed and we find a spot for these.

 

Otherwise I'm pretty happy with how the colors ended up - I did find several different sprites with different palettes, and -- this is hard to admit, but -- I've never actually played much of this game, so I had to defer to my husband for which one looked "right." In the end though, it looks good enough for me, I think.

The one thing I'm not totally thrilled with is the background. Green of course seemed the obvious choice for a Link sprite, and I wanted to make sure his hat stood out so I made sure to go with a lighter shade for the background. And I am happy with the shade I ended up with. What honestly happened, though, is I didn't mix enough paint and I was kind of rushing by the end, so it ended up more watery and blotchy than I had hoped.

In the end though I do like it, and it was a good first step back into this hobby. I really did forget how much I enjoy making these, and I really hope to devote more time to it going forward. I'm planning on doing the Mario World sprite next to complete the series, so I will be sure to post a picture of the completed trio once I get them framed and mounted.