N.R. Wynter's Blog

(Icon made by tkpinkerton) |Steven Universe/Gemsona/Dark Crystal/ Legend of Zelda fan artist|  Dark Crystal Side Blog: @skekheck  Zelda side blog: @volgrawr Gem only blog: @ask-the-bandites

[nrwynter]

Hi there welcome to my blog. This is primarily an art blog for my content, currently focused on Steven Universe, the Dark Crystal, and the Legend of Zelda. 

Here are some of my other active accounts:

@skekheck (My Dark Crystal Side blog) @volgrawr (Zelda sideblog) @ask-the-bandites (Gemsona/SU exclusive Blog) @nrwynter-archive (Archive blog for asks and posts)

Other Stuff:

FAQ | Other Sites

[volgrawr]

Something something 40th anniversary something something art for my AU something something.

[volgrawr]

My piece for the @hyrulewarriorszine !

This was.... a pretty ambitious piece. It ran into a lot of issues with it BUT I'm glad I got it done.

Thank you to the mod team for allowing me to participate again!

[volgrawr]

POV: You hate your co-worker, but you both hate your boss more.

I made this last year and for whatever reason didn't post it?

This was funnier in my head TBH.

[hyrulewarriorszine]

Guiding Compass — CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT

N.R. Wynter's pieces are unmatched when it comes to coloring and composition, and we are very honored to have her returning as one of the Page Artist in the zine!

Find her on social media as: Tumblr: @nrwynter Bluesky: nrwynter

[nrwynter]

Whoever was the genius that thought it was a great idea to make it so all of your local data on your tablet get permanently deleted because you couldn't remember your old password and then realize it has a recovery mode but for whatever reason you weren't opt into it...

I am coming for your kneecaps.

[volgrawr]

So, how's the Red Spirit AU going?

Hi, thanks for showing interest in my AU!

I'm stuck doing character design ATM (and fighting procrastination) , but I've been doing a lot behind the scenes. I'm happy to share what I've been working on so far:

Here's one of the main characters! His name is Larkin and he's Volga's traveling companion.

This is a very rough first pass of another main character, a Goron this time. I'm still playing around with the design so the final version will likely be very different.

Currently I am working on redesigning outfits for the Gerudo. Doing NPCs first and, for fun, I want to try doing something for notable characters like Riju and Urbosa. Plus, they'll be a good point of reference for when I design Volga's Gerudo attire. Here's a mock up I did recently with one of seven alternate color palettes:

This last art piece I'll share is an illustration. It's one of three I have of Volga in his Snowquill set. This one is the only one that's any where near done (but this one still needs a few tweaks). I had wanted this to be something for the winter, but I got carried away with other projects. I'll post all three together soon!

I'm working my way up to designing Volga's dragon armor and once that's done, I'll do a proper introduction for the AU.

In the mean time, I'd be happy to answer questions about the AU if anyone's curious!

[volgrawr]

Starter Armor

Some more design and style practice. Trying to work my way up to designing his dragon armor so I thought I start with Volga's starter/Snowquill set! (The backview still includes the fur mantle I just wanted a reference without it).

I made a base to help me with future clothing designs and also acts as a scar/marking guide I may show at another point.

[volgrawr]

Design and style practice

FINALLY starting to do something with this AU.

[volgrawr]

My second illustration for the @hyrulewarriorszine !

This was a really detail-intensive illustration but I think it came out fantastic. This is the first time I did an interior background like this. It was pretty daunting!

Bonus close ups:

[nrwynter]

I haven't done one of these in forever! I think the last one I did was... four years ago? I thought it would be fun to make one again with my improved art skills and show the work that was put into this piece.

The final piece was one of three idea prompts I submitted for the zine. I was already sketching out thumbnails while I was waiting for approval, but I did draw for one of the rejected prompts as well. (Unfortunately I don't have access to them at this time but I'll add at a later date).

Once the weapon prompt was approved, I got started on a rough sketch. (The sketches were drawn cleaner than what I would normally do to make sure it was readable haha). The toughest part of the piece was its composition. Scattering the weapons was hard because I needed to make sure everything looked balanced and focus was placed on the master sword.

What ended up working for me was I managed to grab as many weapon models from the game as I could find, threw them into Blender, and arranged them until it looked good. A bonus of doing this was having good references for both the piece and the individual weapons themselves (which came in handy when I had to draw some of the detailing). The models were also size accurate so that helped a ton too. I did have to upscale the smaller weapons so they'd be more visible on the cover.

Some of the weapon placement was deliberate, others were put there to fill in space or for another reason. The majority of the characters wielded some variation of a sword so I sprinkled in different weapons and other things to break up the repetition. That includes stuff like the Fierce Deity Mask and Toon Zelda's helmet. The more sillier weapons like Tingle's balloon and King Daphnes' sail were placed in the back so they wouldn't clash too much with the other weapons.

I'll talk about some of the more of the symbolic stuff further down the post.

I also drew an alternative version of this piece with Link being in the center instead of the master sword.

Fun fact: at one point I did consider including Ganon since he's technically playable, but realized he doesn't have a weapon. This would have meant I would also had to include the big Cucco from the cucco mode so neither were ever conceptualized.

I intentionally left the art's tone ambiguous just in case the mod team had something in mind. I did picture it having a dawn color scheme though, and the mods wanted the cover to have a peaceful/hopeful vibe so that worked out. I did however add some sunset choices in my color concepts for more options. The four I made also had sepia versions to fit with the aesthetics of the game.

8 was the one the mods chose. However, I did end up slightly adding 6's colors into it to make the sky pop. This ended up being the finalized color concept.

(It looks a little fuzzy because I ended up layering 8 and 6 on top of each other and I didn't position them correctly fghj).

When I do illustrations I start with the background first so I can use its colors for the foreground and midground. I normally don't draw clouds this big and up close so I had to be pretty delicate with how I rendered it. I'm glad I only had to do one side and just duplicate it to the other. Also I made the oranges in the sky and clouds subdued.

After the background was done, I tried rendering the ground and it was a disaster. This was early on in the rendering phase, but what was meant to be dirt started to look like sand. I tried to see if adding textures would help but it made the problem worse. I ended up taking a break from the ground and moved on to the weapons.

Next was the most grueling part of the piece: linearting. I am not kidding when I say doing the lineart took three whole days. I was also juggling with my other illustration I was working on for the zine so the timeline ended up stretching to a week. I'm a detail-oriented person and stuff like this isn't usually that bad for me but this one was pretty rough. The sweat and tears paid off, I think!

After lineart was done, I went back to render the ground again. It was becoming more polished and included more small rock formations, but the dirt-looking-like-sand bit wasn't improved. I opted to add grass instead since that would be easier to render. That was probably the right call because I think that helped with the desired tone for the cover.

I flipped-flopped between working on the grass and the weapons. This screenshot was when I had added the shading, textures, and some highlights. Oh, and I slightly tweaked the sky a bit.

With the grass and rendering done comes my favorite part: color editing. Started throwing overlays, soft lights, what have you on everything and used color balance to level out the colors. Also added light reflection on the ground for some of the weapons.

Something was missing from the illustration and I had no idea what it was. A friend had suggested particle effects and that did the trick! Everything was set and done and I submitted my illustration. When I saw the cover with the title for the first time, I noticed that the illustration was made a bit brighter than what I originally had (likely so the title stuck out better). I actually really liked that change and edited my own copy of my illustration accordingly.

With that said, now I want to talk about some of the more subtle details in this piece. You guys probably noticed these already, but I want to talk about them anyway! I mentioned deliberate weapon placements some ways up so let me go over that first.

Ghirahim's sword, Zelda's rapier, and the master sword are placed in sort of a triangular way meant to represent the triforce (although I think I messed up on the distance between them). I originally wanted Ganondorf's swords being in Ghirahim's spot but I was worried about contrast issues with the swords' darker color scheme and battling attention away from the master sword. I think the idea still works considering Ghirahim is Demise's sword (and Demise is like the Ganondorf of that game). Though Ganondorf's current placement can be viewed as him being a looming threat, for Hyrule Warriors and other Zelda titles.

I have Lana's tome and Cia's scepter close together to symbolize them being two sides of the same coin. Toon Link and Toon Zelda's were placed on opposite sides of the piece but slightly facing each other. Toon Link's and Tetra's are also diagonal from each other, both also representing a type of connection to each other. It's a similar deal with both forms of Midna's weapons as well as Yuga and Ravio. Speaking of Ravio, his weapon is the only one partially buried, sort of peaking over at the master sword to reflect his cowardice natureand being Link's Lorule opposite (at least the Link from a Linked Between Worlds). A similar idea with Fi is that she is somewhat of a silhouette behind the master sword to reflect her growth in Skyward Sword. (I know technically Fi is represented twice here, but her "weapon" in Hyrule Warriors is a different blade so that's why).

Like I said before not all weapons have symbolic placements like this, but a number of them do.

One more weapon detail I wanted to point out is on the master sword. I had this planned from the very beginning but I intentionally draped Link's scarf over the master sword so that the triforce of courage on the blade is the only one visible. I also intentionally highlighted the engraving to make it more prominent.

In the background, the sky is shaped in a way to resemble the Hyrulean royal crest. With the gap in between the clouds looking like the wings, the Master sword acting as the body, and the three visible stars as the triforce (but I messed that up slightly). Only thing I didn't include was the feet of the crest. It's not an exact 1-to-1, but here's an outline for a better visual:

On the topic of stars, there are 29 in total to represent all 29 characters. The brightest star above the master sword is meant to represent Link, but the other 28 are scattered around. Some are more visible than others so it may be hard to spot them all, but they're there.

Saving this last detail because it doesn't really have anything to do with Zelda and more to do with my art. I have always wanted to do this with my work for a while but haven't implemented it until now so I wanted to bring it attention.

From now on, all of my illustrations will have a hidden little angler fish blended into the scenery. I got the inspiration from Adventure Time's snail that appears in almost every episode incorporated somewhere and thought I could do something similar with my art. I'll show you guys where I placed this one, but you'll have to find the next ones on your own.

Not the clearest, but I promise in the future it'll be better drawn (and in case you're wondering, yes there are also little anglerfish in the other zine illustration too!). I just thought this would be a fun way people can interact with my art (and also act as an additional signature).

And that's it! If you have read all of my rambles, thank you!

[volgrawr]

Cover art I did for @hyrulewarriorszine (minus title). It's still so wild I was part of something like this, let alone create a cover for. I can't thank the mod team enough for giving me this opportunity. It was so nice working with you guys and hanging out with such great artists and writers. Be sure to check out the zine if you haven't already, it's free!

Bonus close ups:

[hyrulewarriorszine]

Denouement of War — COVER REVEAL

We are just one week away from the release date, so we present to you the cover of Denouement of War: Hyrule Warriors Zine, illustrated by the one and only @nrwynter!

The full zine will have over 200+ pages of work from both artists and writers, stay tuned for the release date on August 14th!

[nrwynter]

Heyy there it is! Want to once again thank the mod team for giving me the opportunity to illustrate the cover. It was really nice working with you guys!

[volgrawr]

Old short comic I did last year while I was trying to get used to drawing these characters.

Man really screams rawr XD at his enemies.

[friedtalekryptonite]

Fire Agate + Serendibite = (PWJ) Parrot Wing Jasper

@nrwynter

[nrwynter]

Oooh, this is cool. I love Parrot Wing's silhouette and shape design!

Thank you so much!

[skekheck]

I drew this last month and forgot about it til now.

Meme source:

[nrwynter]

So unfortunately this STILL isn't done. I accidentally hurt my wrist drawing this over October (I was too in the zone and didn't take appropriate breaks whoops!). However, it's very close to being done and I figured I'd post something on the day of Steven Universe's 10th anniversary.

Yes, I am drawing EVERY Gem I own/created. This is how I found out I have made over 100 since I started making gemsona stuff. Craziness.