Tribal Link [complete] (image heavy)
greentooth
After playing breath of the wild I felt very inspired to create a new model of Link. I stumbled upon a great concept by Trent Kaniuga and decided to run with it.
Concept: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/r4Zk2
Hope you guys like the result! Either way it was a fun time 
Replies
love the character,
I do think the backgroung is a bit too vibrant and takiing the focus away from the great work you made on the character.
Color wise I believe the tree leaves are also off, too saturated and too cold compared to the rest of the environment. they kind of clash.
Bringing down the enviro to something more faded/pastels might help?
This is a really shitty sketch but its to show what I meant by it.
The fact that everything is green/blue/grey and there is no complementary colors on top of everything doesn't help either.
EX :
Shirt is green, tree is green, grass is green, hat is green (And it's almost hidden inside the leaves because of this).
Pants are beige, face is beige, tree is beige.
Sword is blue, sky is blue.
How am I supposed to read through this?
Another thing that bothers me is the fact that his whole head, except for that blue paint, is beige/yellow. Lips are the same colors almost as his skin. Eyes don't stand out because, again, there is so much green, that it's hard to focus there.
Add all these problems on top of what Marie said and we are in for a very busy visual ride.
It's a very well done model, I don't want you to think that I'm seeing negativity, but it still needs refining for the presentation. It's unbalanced at the moment.
The grey background version is much more rewarding for your character at the moment, which is kind of the problem with the whatever-nature-pedestal version
You're all absolutely right @TeriyakiStyle, @Brian "Panda" Choi , @Tits, @Felixenfeu . The last thing I want to do is have a half baked final presentation after putting in all the effort! Now I don't want to go too far off concept but I did adjust the environment and the face to make his eyes pop more. I might need to move the tree around depending on the viewing angle. I know it might make more sense just to be rid of it but I practicing giving my characters context and a small chunk of world. There's still a lot of green but that's kinda par for the course with link. Not sure how to get around it while still keeping him in a plant-filled environment. Hopefully the variation of tone helps. I also had a comment that the pose was kinda week so I made a more dynamic one as well.
On a side note, Brian I agree that it isn't really inspiring the idea of the kokiri. Honestly the theme of the design was "tribe" and kokiri was just me having fun with a fake title
Anyway thanks again for helping me push this further! I appreciate all your advice!
Awesome character! I can't help but wonder if adding some fov and rim lights will help.
The colours of the environment in the zelda games are a lot softer, and they use lighting to make Link stand out. Perhaps moving the tree further back and making it bigger will also improve this (as i think the leaves still distract from the character), but I think using a directional light to get a nice rim light on your char and utilising the camera to get some depth of field could bring this up to a higher standard.
Awesome stuff all together!
Besides that I've updated Link's textures, posing and lighting. Thanks again everyone for the advice it really does mean a lot to me.
https://www.artstation.com/artwork/gWb5m