The Temptation of Majora - Process Shots

Here's all the steps that led up to the final illustration for The Temptation of Majora. Don't forget that if you're interested in buying a print of this piece you can get one by clicking HERE.

Skull Kid Study

Just trying to play with color, lighting, and mood. Trying to get the juices flowing and get into the spirit.

Majora Redesigns

1 - Rough greyscale sketch

2 - Tight drawing

3 - Flat colors, creating silhouettes

4 - starting to render the form of Majora

5 - more rendering forms, moving onto skull kid

6 - lighting skull kid with the mask as a light source

7 - Painting over Majora's forms to add patterning

8 - adding in details, fixing anatomy

9 - first pass on background

10 - I didn't like Skull kid's hat so I redid it, added tendrils from Majora

11 - refining hat shape, pushing tendril back in space

12 - Enhancing lighting, render, render

13 - adding hair, enhancing glow

14 - adjusting background to enhance the focus + add interest, add back-lighting

15 - enhance secondary lighting

16 - adjust trees (felt weird) enhance rim-lighting

17 - foreground rendering

18 - adjusting values, adding glows to help focal points

19 - Calming down my colors + adjustment layers and final touches

BONUS: Alternate sketch idea, Link Vs. Majora

Thanks for making it all the way to the end! If you have any questions for me feel free to email me at mrburns928@aol.com and I'll get back to you as soon as I can!

The Temptation of Majora

There's been a lot of buzz about Majora's Mask lately with the remastered game coming out on the 3DS. I pre-ordered the game (had to get the gold cartridge) when it first came out back in 2000. And it was one of those games that really stuck with me thanks to it's dark and unsettling atmosphere, some great new gameplay features, and some really cool designs.

"Do you want to play with me?"

The mask itself is very iconic and striking, and what it transforms into later in the game is pretty bizarre. Here are the 3 stages of the mask...

Majora's Mask

Majora's Incarnation

Majora's Wrath

While each stage of Majora has some really cool and unsettling elements to it, I always felt like the Incarnation stage was a bit too goofy, and that the Wrath stage was a bit too hard to see what was going on, and the pyramids on his shoulders feel out of place.

Majora redesign

So I decided to try and reinterpret the final form of Majora, taking cues from the designs that are already in place, but trying to make something that I thought might fit better. My main concern was, if the mask was created in Majora's image, then you should be able to see details in the creature form that became more subtle in the Mask itself. Instead of just the mask turning into the creature, I wanted to create a creature that the mask could be based on.

(100% resolution)

I was pretty happy with the results of my redesign, and so instead of stopping there, I decided to incorporate the design into a full illustration. I wanted to show the moment of Skull Kid's temptation for the Mask. At the point depicted in my illustration, he hasn't yet worn the mask, but he can sense great power coming from within, a power that is looming over him and just waiting for him to seize it. A lot of my portfolio tends to be a lot of dudes just standing around, so I really wanted to try and tell a story with this piece. I hope you like the results. I'll be posting process shots in a later blog post so keep an eye out if you're interested<3 br="">

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