Ever since I first saw this character while playing The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess on the Wii when it first launched I've been infatuated with her. The design was so exotic and unconventional for a character. Nothing like I had seen before. Her 'imp' form got on my frigging nerves, but when she showed her true form I was like, "Wow...."
Obviously she is gorgeous, but it seems like there is a story behind her eyes begging to be told. I really would like to know more about her character. Nintendo could really turn things upside-down if they were to make a game based on her and the Twilight kingdom.
Way back in 2008 I tried my hand at drawing Midna. It pains me to do this as I wretch every time I look at my art work from back then, but this is what it looked like.
comes back from barfing
Okay. Yeah. That was pretty bad. As you can see there are tons of things wrong with the picture. Not just with the art itself, but her clothing. So I drew a picture of her again a few years ago. Some of you who follow me have probably already seen it as well as the animated version of the picture that I did around 2013.
Now that is much better. I was able to do get much closer to getting her clothing correct. I still like this picture a lot and even though there are obviously mistakes throughout the picture, I'm not going to try and redo this picture. It's my most viewed composition on Deviant Art. I'll leave it be.
However, that first picture really bothers me. Recently I have been on a kick of taking terrible artwork I have done in the past, and seeing how far I have come (and where I need to go) by drawing it over. For instance. Here is a picture of Red Monika from the Battle Chasers comic that I recently drew over again.
As you can see there is a big difference from what I did in 2010 versus just a few weeks ago.
So I decided to do the Midna picture over again. I have to say something though. As much as I love that character, Midna is dreadfully over-designed. There is just too much going on with her clothing to get it right 100%. Something is going to be off somewhere every time. Instead of speeding-up the inset of Carpal-Tunnel Syndrome on by hand by trying to draw all those minute and intricate details, I drew each artifact piece-by-piece in Adobe Photoshop. I went online, looked at her patterns and jewel designs, and recreated each separately.
Here I made the things that hang off of each side of the top of her head. I made a stencil for her hair-tie at the top. I made the clasp-thing that ties her pig-tails together, and I made the band that is at the top of her skirt.
This is the.......well...I'm not sure what it is. It hangs down on her forehead and in-between her eyes.
These are the glowing tattoos. The one of the left is for her right leg, and and the other is for her arms.
This is the pattern that is on the front of her skirt
This pattern is on the inside of her clock. You don't get to see much of this on any picture drawn of her, but it's nice to have it anyway.
This is just a random tiger-pattern I found online. She has a similar pattern on the outside of her cloak (mainly in the shoulder area,) but it's more of a "circular" pattern. I was able to use the warp-tool to bend it into a more circular form.
So after all that planning and all that work, here is the final result.
WHEW I feel like I need a vacation after all that! This turned out pretty good. I animated this using Adobe After Effects. I used CC Particle World to create the Twilight world "effects." Surprisingly, it didn't take me that long to do this in After Effects. It didn't even take that long to render. Putting the composition together though, HA! That took two and a half days.
So as you can see I have come a LONG way since 2008, but....I still have a LONG way to go. I did this blog just to show people that hard work does pay off. As always, thank you for taking time to visit my blog. Have a great day!
