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skyloftian-nutcase · 9 months

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Hey guess what it's more Good Ganondorf content!

@silvercaptain24 <3

The party had long since finished. Link had been escorted back to his room and left in peace. With food in his stomach and some water, he felt his strength returning. His body trembled as he stood tentatively, alone in his room, but he managed to stay on his feet nonetheless.

Stepping quietly to the door, Link put an ear to it. There had to be guards outside, but he hadn't seen any when Nabooru had brought him back here.

This entire situation was making less sense, but he wasn't going to stick around long enough to parse it all out. Nabooru had claimed Ganondorf was holding him hostage to keep him safe. Ganondorf himself had tried to make himself look like he wasn't the villain, like the entirety of Hyrule hadn't been ripped apart at the seams because of his corruption and desire for power, like he hadn't torn the Triforce from Link and Zelda in battle while his army slaughtered their men.

It didn't make sense. What game was the monster playing? Link would have to figure it out when he made it back to his own people. Zelda and his army were waiting for him. The queen was no doubt trying to get a rescue operation together, and Link didn't want to risk anyone's lives over himself, not when he could find his own way out. He wasn't some helpless fool, he could handle this, and he would get the Triforce pieces back that the queen so desperately guarded.

He'd seen the crazed look in Zelda's eyes when they'd lost the Triforce the first time. He didn't want to see that again.

There was no other way out of this room than to use the door. It felt stupidly simple and reckless. He had to open it quickly, to catch the guards by surprise, wherever they were stationed. He needed some kind of weapon. He'd managed to sneak a knife in from dinner, slipping it into his boot, but he wasn't sure how useful it would be. He gripped it firmly in his hand and took a steadying breath.

It was now or never.

Link threw the door open, quickly taking in his surroundings, and saw... nothing.

No one... was there.

Well, he couldn't stop to think about it. The noise he'd just made would attract attention.

Trying to remember the path Nabooru had led him through to get outside, Link ran quickly, ignoring the chill that sank into his bones as he moved. When had it gotten so cold? His fingers felt like they were getting numb already as they gripped the knife.

The hallway opened up to a larger room. He remembered that. This was where--

A hand grabbed him by the back of his tunic and yanked harshly, sending him to the floor with a yell. Link kicked blindly, eyes focusing on his target.

It was Ghirahim.

Snarling, Link rolled to get away and swiped with the knife to create distance. Ghirahim caught his arm by the wrist, watching him with a sadistic smile.

"I figured you wouldn't sit still for long, sky child," he purred.

Something in Link roared in response, and he let out a battle cry as gripped the demon's arm with his free hand, bringing all his weight down to drag Ghirahim to the ground. The demon gasped a little at the increased weight he was holding, but he caught the hero by the shirt instead of letting them both fall.

Link spat in his face next, and that worked brilliantly, making the demon hiss and pull away immediately. Free from his grasp, Link began to run, knowing this was not a fight he was going to win with a knife. He heard a snap and Ghirahim appeared in front of him.

"Now, now," Ghirahim said, brushing some white hair out of his face. "I have strict orders to keep you here."

"Over my dead body," Link snarled.

"Oh, I wish," Ghirahim replied. "You see, that has been a point of contention lately. My master wishes you alive and it is so dreadfully taxing on me. But I trust his judgment. He has a way to address the true matter. And then your little vassal can be safe and sound while I deal with you."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Link snapped, eyes searching for another escape route as he spoke. The demon lord certainly loved to talk, so if Link could use that to his advantage, he would.

"It's amazing how dense you can be," Ghirahim grumbled. "Honestly, an entire war fought for you and you don't even understand it. Cia may have fallen in love with you, but she desires your vassal. Nevertheless, this has always been about eliminating you. My master understands that. It will be my highest honor to serve in that capacity for him, to be the one to deliver the killing blow. I cannot wait for that momentous occasion."

"You're out of your mind," Link replied. Another hallway was just to the left, and if he ran fast enough... "I am the Hero. I don't know what you're talking about with vassals. I serve the queen as a--"

"THIS ISN'T ABOUT THE QUEEN!" Ghirahim screamed, face contorted in rage. "This is about you, sky child, about revenge, about eliminating the one threat in my master's way! Her Grace isn't here, and her descendant doesn't have a fraction of that power, the Triforce is all my master needs now, and I will finally be able to kill you!"

The conversation was about to end and Link knew it. He tore off in the direction of the other hallway, managing to round the corner when he heard a snap again. He was prepared this time, grabbing the nearest pot and throwing it just as diamonds materialized in front of him. Ghirahim grunted as it made impact as soon as he appeared, shattering into countless pieces while Link quickly backtracked and went a different way.

By the grace of the goddesses, that had given the captain enough time to at least outmaneuver the demon lord, who wasn't sure which part of the compound Link had ended up by now. He was grateful for it, his heart racing and pounding in his ears as he rushed to find an exit. Fighting Ghirahim in the heat of battle felt far more... controlled than this. Here he felt like prey, and Ghirahim's rage and power over him was...

He wasn't going to say he was scared. He wouldn't.

Link felt a breeze and it gave him hope. That had to mean he was close to the outdoors. But where were all the Gerudo?

A door was up ahead, sand trickling in from beneath it, a promise of freedom and safety. Link threw it open with relief.

And ran right into Ganondorf.

Gasping, Link scrambled backwards, losing his footing and his balance as he fell unceremoniously to the ground. He continued to scoot away, trying to find a way around the towering figure. The man was enormous - it could give Link the advantage of scurrying around him if he was fast enough, but the world was spinning and--

"I figured you might try this," Ganondorf sighed.

Okay. Okay, fine. So they were talking. That would give him time to catch his breath. All these fools and their monologues - and people said Link was arrogant. At least he didn't usually give his enemies time to formulate a plan while they were actively standing in front of him.

"Your strength is returning," Ganondorf noted, walking towards him. "But that doesn't mean you're ready for a fight."

Well, Link might as well try to get some answers while he was here. "Where's the Triforce, you monster?"

"Where it needs to be," Ganondorf answered simply, closing the door behind him, much to Link's dismay. He stared at Link for an uncomfortably long time, making the captain squirm.

"Nabooru said you want me alive. Tell me why," he demanded, trying to make the man talk again.

Ganondorf was silent for a moment longer and then shook his head. "You're not in a state to accept my words."

"Try me," Link goaded. He had to admit, at this point he was curious. And it bought him more time to figure out what the heck his next step would be.

"I know your type, Hero," Ganondorf said, tacking on the title as if it were a curse. "You follow the queen like a puppy that doesn't know any better. Your heart is filled with a sense of duty, a desire to help and do good, and it is fixed on that woman. You'll do whatever Zelda tells you."

Link bristled but bit his tongue. Whatever slander Ganondorf was about to say didn't interest him, but the man hadn't made a point yet.

"You don't see the mess you're in," Ganondorf continued, shaking his head. "You don't understand. I'm trying to protect you, Link."

Link blinked. Then he blinked again. Nabooru had said as much, but hearing it from him... well. She had said keep him safe. He'd interpreted it as keep him alive. "Protect me from what?"

"Everything," Ganondorf muttered in a low time, voice rumbling in his chest. He bent forward, as if to grab Link, and the captain took that as his cue.

Link bolted, rushing to the left to get out of the reach of the man as he tried to run around him, using his small size to his advantage. He reached the door and immediately realized his mistake.

It was locked.

The ground vanished beneath him, and Link felt his stomach lurch as he was held in the air by one of his arms. The strain of having his entire body weight pulled into his shoulder joint made him grit his teeth. Then his world twirled as he was tossed against the man, his back to Ganondorf's chest, held in place by an arm wrapped around his torso.

"Let me go!" he yelled, kicking his legs as much as possible.

"I told you that you were not ready for this conversation," Ganondorf said, almost chidingly. "I'm taking you back to your room so you can rest."

"You think I'll be ready for a conversation that isn't true?" Link snapped. "You're holding me hostage for a reason, stop lying to me!"

Ganondorf said nothing, walking down the hallway with Link his helpless prisoner dangling in his grip. His waist and stomach ached from the hold, though at least pressed against someone else warmed him enough that he wasn't shivering and numb. His body was screaming at him at this point, wounds he hadn't even realized existed suddenly flaring up. He supposed the battle that had gotten him captured had left more marks than he'd realized.

That didn't matter. Escaping mattered.

Link felt so utterly helpless and he hated it. He'd never felt so out of control in his life. When he was plopped back on the bed and left alone to his own musings, he curled into a ball, suddenly shivering again.

He felt so, so alone. And suddenly, with the thought of Ghirahim's twisted, demented, enraged face, with the thought of how easily Ganondorf just manhandled him, he felt...

He wasn't going to say it. He wasn't going to say it.

Damn it all, he was scared. And he hated it.

He was the bearer of the Triforce of Courage and he was scared.

Burying his face into his knees, Link hugged himself and cursed himself at the same time. The tears fell silently at first before little hiccups started to accompany them. He was too tired for this. The only mercy the goddesses provided was that he was alone. He didn't want anyone to see him like this.

His body felt impossibly heavy. The room felt like it was closing in. He was exhausted. His head hurt. His stomach ached from how he'd been held. Something on his back seared like fire. His knees were bothering him. He was freezing. He felt so unbelievably overwhelmed. He felt so unbelievably unsafe.

He'd always been the one to save the day. He'd been invincible with the Master Sword, though he'd learned that having others to help him was equally as important. But he had no Master Sword here. No friends. No hope of anything.

In the darkness and cold of the night, his fears consumed him, and he gave into despair. Link cried, so desperately alone. He just wanted to feel safe.

Warmth enveloped him, and he sank into it willingly, his hiccups turning into sobs. Something ran soothingly along his back, soft cloth was pressed against his face, and he found himself clinging to it desperately like a lifeline.

He needed to get himself together. He didn't care. No one was here anyway.

Then what's... why am I...?

He was too tired to process it anymore. All he knew was he felt safe.

"You'll be okay, child."

The voice was deep and gentle, whispered into his hair. Gentle pressure pressed him against whatever softness was in front of him. He heard a heartbeat.

A heartbeat. Pressure. Words. This was... he wasn't alone.

Hiccupping, Link opened his eyes, hands still clinging for dear life to patterned cloth in front of him, red hair spilling into his face as it slid over the person's shoulders.

A deep voice. A man's voice. A man wearing Gerudo--

What the hell.

Alarms rang in Link's mind as he put the pieces together. This couldn't be right this couldn't be right--

"You're safe," the voice said gently, continuing to run a hand along his back.

Link was so lost and confused and hurt and why the hell didn't anything make sense what was happening--

"I'll fix this," Ganondorf promised, and Link gave up entirely, falling apart.

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quirinah · 1 month

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how do you get your colors to look so nice and your lineart so red and vibrant? i love it

omg anon thank you!! 😭 im going 2 be honest I am Not Great with color theory... but i like having my sketch pages look cohesive to me...

BUCKLE UP this is going to need a readmore bc i like talking.

I always sketch in neon colors it's a habit i picked up from an old teacher but I'll think of a color usually on a whim and draw with that. and then if i want to draw something else ill pick another color that i think goes well with the page. usually most of my color schemes r analogous (colors right next to each other on the wheel)

yanked this from recent dunmesh post; i kept most of my colors within the pink/red/orange range.

i wouldn't recommend doing everything in monochrome or analogous palettes though because it's sort of a guilty crutch of mine XD.

sometimes when im coloring ill change the layer mode of the sketch. color burn gets you either very very bright or very very deep colors depending on the color of the flats underneath. multiply and linear burn do the same thing but they're a lot tamer and generally always return darker colors. im sure there's some technical bits behind this though. ill either color my lineart afterward to compliment the color of the flats, leave it as is, or mess with layer modes if i feel like it. my favorite trick is color burn + linear burn + some combination of two lineart layers and just fiddling until i get a nice burn effect.

mithrun was done with crimson red on color burn.

coloring... like 999% of this is relative color which is like. kind of the idea that colors look different when placed next to each other. if you eyeball it a bit it's pretty noticeable.

what i used to do a bit ago was i would fill in the area i wanted to color with one big mask of color, make a new layer that has a clipping mask down to the flat layer of color, and then draw my actual flat colors. the color of the mask helped me pick my flat colors bc if I picked a color i think stood out too much next to the mask i could kind of just adjust it until it looked a little more cohesive.

old ish drawing next 2 a canon reference. i ignore local color a lot...mea culpa....but my overall color palette here was a light pink, so the shirt here is actually a desaturated pink? or violet i believe. if you shift sort of that purple color far enough into the gray area of your color wheel it can take on a blueish or even greenish hue. it being next to a lot of warm pinks/fuschias helps.

a neat thing that kind of helps is that if you desaturate or saturate certain colors they can kind of take on a certain hue? not sure if this makes sense. sort of how orange here turns tealish blue the grayer it gets. so if im drawing something that's predominantly orange and i have a blue color i can just take an orange color and desaturate it until i get a color that sort of looks like blue. and that way it kind of looks more harmonious? at least to me XD

shading. i don't apply serious lighting to a lot of my drawings, but a helpful bit is that the shadows tend to be the opposite of whatever color the lighting is? i try to think first about the "mood" or the main color i want to go for in the drawing and then i pick a shadow color opposite of that. so for here, i wanted the lighting to be a coolish magenta so the shadows r lime green. if there's anything off i fiddle around until i get something i like. the shadows on the skin here were too green initially so i shifted them a little more orange.

there's a "band" of color going on between the transition of the shadows to the light. generally this could be for a lot of reasons and i tend to use it differently (core shadow? overexposure? etc etc). but this is a color post so ill try not to go too off track.

but generally digital doesn't "mix" colors the same way traditional colors do if you use RGB (cmyk is a bit better with this but is kind of a pain to get used to), so to make blending a little less muddy, i sometimes add an intermediate color to smooth things out a little. for example, mixing digitally blue n yellow tends to get you gray, but generally, blue + yellow makes green, so if im making a blue->yellow transition ill slap some green color in the middle so it flows a little better.

I do a lot more cel shading nowadays. if you've been on here for a while earlier this year i have another style of coloring but it's not really accurate to how shadows really work so i wouldn't recommend looking at it. it's mostly to add zest and texture to the underlying flat colors.

coloring your lineart does a TON to helping your colors look vibrant, though its like the garnish on a dish to me (same with shadows). i think it's good to try and play with your flat colors and try to make sure those look in order first before adding flourishes. usually ill leave it a dark, saturated color that again matches my overall palette but sometimes i go in and color them by alpha locking my lineart layer and picking a color that matches the flat colors underneath? not sure how to explain it properly.

i used a darkish purple for shuro's ponytail to match the dull red of the flat colors (more relative color! trying to simulate a black/brown while keeping the pink palette there) but a lighter crimson for laios's blond. the light was this super intense like blush pink so i thought it might be cool to add this neon salmon red in the areas of that light to really give off that vibe of a very bright intense rim light.

sometimes you could also tweak with gradient maps or color balance, which adjusts hue based on how light or dark a color is. these r fun to mess with as a final touch but i need to watch using them because they can become crutches real fast XD but those are also just tools to help you. in the end just developing a good sense of how color works and how you want to use it is the best place to start.

LONGASS ramble but yeah. tldr just kind of train ur eye for color and look at what you like best. which is unhelpful and a little sucky but it really is just observation and practice and maybe some personal zest.

happy drawing!

#SORRY THIS IS THE SIZE OF CANADA I YAP A LOT #i like being thorough when explaining myself a lot XD but i think the easiest way to get good with this is just repeat practice n observing #and figuring out how stuff behaves in certain situations and what you like to do and blahblahblah #if you have artists u like that do this well looking at how they use color might be cool #...i feel this entire post is just putting my entire thought process on blast LOLLL.#“eyeball it out” -> study some actual fundamental stuff and or intake new info or art -> apply it back to just eyeballing it out #i dont think i have a natural sense for some basics #but i dont think im naturally one of those people who grind out studies all the time and breakdowns either #i guess i just kind of like knowing the mechanations behind why to do a certain thing or how stuff works and then figuring out #how that translates into what i know nerd emoji #james gurney has a good book on color and light #if you like reading. but its very informative!#quirinahscreams #ask #anon #this is mostly just me talking about how i draw i dont think this is meant to be educational or informative XD um

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