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Description
Large file, full view at your own risk.

This is the background for a picture I was recently commissioned to do. It was heavily inspired by the song Darkness, Darkness (Solas version), New Age music by Inkuyo, and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass - in fact the language on the flags is Hyrulian (fan interruption, not official). The scripture translates: "Dark temple of Shadow - Rise again and cover the world with your Midnight Cloak."

I decided to upload this background on it's own because I wanted to give it a little more in depth explanation about how I did what and where.

First I'll start off with the rocks/boulders, since they cover like 75% of the picture. First thing I did was sketch the basic line art for the rocks, which is actually only a total of 5 (four smaller rocks and a bolder); I did them in such a way that could be 'seamless' and yet not at the same time. With this line art I created a brush and began to duplicate the stones over and over until I had a section of wall to work with. After that it was just a matter of copy, paste, and skew/distort/rotate in any direction I wanted.

Once that was done I added a flat color underneath the lines with the basic shadows and highlights; nothing too detailed yet, just enough to indicate what direction the light was shining. I wanted to try something new so I looked to this tutorial ([link] ) for a few really good pointers and tips and applied them to my own work, tweaking them to what I liked, of course. You can compare my finished picture with the tutorial to see the differences.

This is the same technique I used on the stone/crystal pillars.

Finally, I locked all visible pixels on the line art layer and colored them; keeping in mind not to make them too defined with dark colors. I'd say that on any given area the lines for the stones are maybe two shades darker then the base coloring.

I really enjoyed working on this background, it gave me a chance to work on something I feel I pretty much suck at: rocks. Usually I don't have the patience or the skill to handle so many rocks, but with a little help from that nifty tutorial and a few useful shortcuts I was able to pull something off that I'm really proud of.

Tools and References used:
Adobe Photoshop 7.0
Rock Tutorial
Hyrulian Font (Fan Interpretation)
Indian Ornaments Brushes

Copyrights and Inspirations:
Image © Copyright 2007 Raquel Richardson; Please do not copy, alter or redistribute this image.
Rock Tutorial © *Katikut
Indian Ornaments Brushes © ~Lileya
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass & Hyrulian concept © Shigeru Miyamoto & Nintendo
Darkness Darkness (as preformed by Solas)
Inkuyo

Description
Large file, full view at your own risk.

This is the background for a picture I was recently commissioned to do. It was heavily inspired by the song Darkness, Darkness (Solas version), New Age music by Inkuyo, and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass - in fact the language on the flags is Hyrulian (fan interruption, not official). The scripture translates: "Dark temple of Shadow - Rise again and cover the world with your Midnight Cloak."

I decided to upload this background on it's own because I wanted to give it a little more in depth explanation about how I did what and where.

First I'll start off with the rocks/boulders, since they cover like 75% of the picture. First thing I did was sketch the basic line art for the rocks, which is actually only a total of 5 (four smaller rocks and a bolder); I did them in such a way that could be 'seamless' and yet not at the same time. With this line art I created a brush and began to duplicate the stones over and over until I had a section of wall to work with. After that it was just a matter of copy, paste, and skew/distort/rotate in any direction I wanted.

Once that was done I added a flat color underneath the lines with the basic shadows and highlights; nothing too detailed yet, just enough to indicate what direction the light was shining. I wanted to try something new so I looked to this tutorial ([link] ) for a few really good pointers and tips and applied them to my own work, tweaking them to what I liked, of course. You can compare my finished picture with the tutorial to see the differences.

This is the same technique I used on the stone/crystal pillars.

Finally, I locked all visible pixels on the line art layer and colored them; keeping in mind not to make them too defined with dark colors. I'd say that on any given area the lines for the stones are maybe two shades darker then the base coloring.

I really enjoyed working on this background, it gave me a chance to work on something I feel I pretty much suck at: rocks. Usually I don't have the patience or the skill to handle so many rocks, but with a little help from that nifty tutorial and a few useful shortcuts I was able to pull something off that I'm really proud of.

Tools and References used:
Adobe Photoshop 7.0
Rock Tutorial
Hyrulian Font (Fan Interpretation)
Indian Ornaments Brushes

Copyrights and Inspirations:
Image © Copyright 2007 Raquel Richardson; Please do not copy, alter or redistribute this image.
Rock Tutorial © *Katikut
Indian Ornaments Brushes © ~Lileya
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass & Hyrulian concept © Shigeru Miyamoto & Nintendo
Darkness Darkness (as preformed by Solas)
Inkuyo