no.17: Ganondorf - Legend of Zelda
( background by: https://www.deviantart.com/mcmoontloz )

- RUNNER-UP; circa 2012 "Oops! All Zelda!" countdown: https://www.deviantart.com/theflami.....Evil-335162603 -

Only one man is born every hundred years...

Ganondorf is one of those villain whom I respect as he's the main antagonist of my favorite video game series, but one that I also don't think much of at the same time. This is primarily due to the fact that he's never had a design I particularly enjoy. Now don't get me wrong, the ground work is there. Every incarnation he's had features some great design elements, but for each one I enjoy there's several more that I don't. So for what may be my one and only other time drawing the character, I figured I'd take all the positives from his many designs and make up my own; as I am want to do! As always, bear in mind, this is just a creative experiment. I in no way am saying I'm a superior designer to anyone at Nintendo, I just like to take my own spin on things.

That said, when it comes to Ganondorf my main issue is always that he never invokes the feeling of "wizard warlord from the desert" visually. They lean much more into the warlord side and not enough on wizard. Sadly, the only time he's really looked like a wizard was in Oracle of Age/Seasons, where he never actually appeared in and Wind Waker where just just looks dumpy. The only other place to pull from was his mothers, Twinrova. As for his armor, it's always looked far too European, which I blame mostly on the fact that the Gerudo weren't fully fleshed out until more recently. Now that they are however, it was a great help as I could us canon Gerudo attire for their king! I wanted something that showed off both the elegance of a predominantly female society in a very intimidating looking man-(hence the mane ala Hyrule Warriors)-as well as an inherent over confidence in his strength; sparse armor and willingly showing off his scar from the execution he survived, no doubt a symbol of pride to him!

Facially, I'll always side with his Ocarina of Time incarnation. Other designs softened his face too much with a beard and a flatter nose, but for my money that huge, sharp nose and piercing eyes make him look far more predatory. The large nose can also indicative of a boar's-snout, which helps loop thing back to Ganon, who is barely present in any of Ganondorf's visual elements at all for some odd reason. As the two are one and the same, I wanted to tie some of Ganon's classic design elements, primarily the use of his trident. In my opinion, Ganondorf should not use a sword. I get why they do it and I'm not saying he wouldn't entirely, but I feel a sword is too easy to wield. A trident would require more skill to wield, another thing I'd see him taking pride in. It also creates a more striking, intimidating image which would be more important to him, even if it's technically a less useful weapon. It's not like it would matter anyway given his magical powers and again, it's Ganon's canon weapon so why wouldn't it just be Ganondorf's answer to the Master Sword?

I could go on about all the little elements I combined and took from other sources, but we'd be here and day and more of the fun is finding them yourself. All-in-all I really made something that I find to be, in my mind, the definitive look of the King of Evil... and now I have to sit here and accept that it will never be... damn.