Koholind Island: Links Awakening Fan-Art
Hi everyone
The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening has been one of my favorite games since my
early childhood, so when the remake was announced I was beyond happy.
Back then I was such a fan that I actually wrote a ‘special instruction manual’
where I illustrated key moments of the game and even included a foldable map
where I had drawn every single screen of the game in all of it’s detail.
It’s been a very long while since I had time for a personal project so when I found
myself with some spare time I knew I had to follow-up on the ‘special
instruction manual’ from yesteryear with another trip to Koholind island.
The goal of this project is to re-imagine the remake in UE4 and take it in a
still stylized but different direction.
Here’s my progress so far after the first few hours:
First I needed, and still do, to figure out the scale of my world.
I want all the locations to be readily identifiable but suited for a more
realistically scaled player.
So the first thing I did was fire up my switch, take my trusty shovel and start
measuring blocks.
Once I had mapped out a chunk of Mabe Village and the surrounding Area I
brought it into Unreal to get a feel for it.
The next step was to turn it into an island, zeldamaps.com has a fantastic
looking map so I grabbed that and circularized it. It was very distorted, and
the scaling of the regions was problematic.
From there I went back into Photoshop and tried to align pieces of the map
without distorting them too much. Once I had something I was happy with I
started building it in Unreal.
The whole island is barely 1km in radius and features very distinct biomes so I
hope that by keeping the areas small and separated it will be cute.
I’m placing heavy emphasis on familiarizing myself with the
new landscape tools that came with 4.24.
The landmass plugin is simply amazing! If I realize that I don’t like something,
I can refactor my landscape within minutes just by dragging a few landscape
brushes around.
The next steps will be to finish the shapes that make up the island and then test
it rigorously if it feels right. Then I can start building assets for it and
proper materials for the terrain.
Replies
I finished blocking out the island using only landscape brushes (around 300+ of them).
Next I will make a house, tree and some grass to figure out the overall language for the rest.
Embedding images through url doesn't seem to want to work.
What's the best way these days to add images to your posts?
Cheers
It took a lot longer to figure out my pipeline than anticipated;
I wan't to go for a stylized feel but not the 'traditional' blizzard style, it took some doing and it definitely needs iteration once I can see quantities of models and materials but so far I like it.
They have been a particular challenge, since most of the game is made of those trees.
They are a cross between a pine-tree and a banana tree and just getting something that looks even remotely right (possible) yet grounded in Links Awakening is an ongoing effort.
Here I had another go at the leaf texture.
From the last version, I split them up into 4 variations to break up the shapes and added some texture detail for the 'painterly' feel.
Ended up removing all color again and using the brushstrokes as a mask to blend between 2 colors as I've been doing for every other material so far.
I'd love some input
Cheers