Not an artist: Four items from Oracle of Seasons that are both keys and weapons.

Four items from Oracle of Seasons that are both keys and weapons.

Gnarled Key: The first key Link obtains in his travels through Holodrum is given to him by the Great Maku Tree after Link rudely wakes him up after winning the sword from the Hero’s Cave. The key opens the first dungeon, the Gnarled Root Dungeon, just north of Horon Village and Impa’s hut.

This weapon is a root of the world tree that grew around a rare piece of the world that was before. With the primal energies stored in the wood and stone, this weapon can bend and warp itself to match the users any whim, and it is the only offering the great bramble witch will accept to visit her well of knowledge. It is either part with the root, or raise it in violence.

Not an artist: Four items from Oracle of Season you can find in buddy comedies.

Four items from Oracle of Season you can find in buddy comedies.

Spring Banana: Oddly enough, this banana only grows during Spring near the peak of Mt.Cucco. The rare delicacy can only be reached by hitching a ride on the flying cuccos that give Mt. Cucco its name.

The bananas are given to Moosh, the flying panda, in exchange for his help in navigating the many pits and precipices of Mt. Cucco. Without Moosh’s help, Link would not be able to scale the mountain and reach the Dancing Dragon Dungeon.

Nothing can wreck a morning more than slipping on a banana peel and falling face-first into the cake for the party this afternoon. Nothing can make a worse first impression than having your new partner slip and fall on a banana peel you couldn’t quite get into the compost bin. Now the two of you are going to have to work together to find a replacement for the cake you ruined before anyone else finds out.

Pop culture remix: Use this Sword of Fire and Ice as a reminder that climate change is real

The Sword of Fire and Ice delicately balanced atop a world in peril.

Sword of Fire and Ice: This classic artifact from Magic the Gathering is one of the more iconic pieces that people who don’t even play, i.e. me, know about. My take on it also combine imagery from another game I don’t play but enjoy consuming the lore. DOTA 2’s Jakiro is a two headed drake possessing the destructive forces of fire in one head and ice in the other.

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Climate change is a real pressing issue and the effects of climate change are very obvious in the mega-droughts, super fires, and extreme polar vortexes that are making it almost impossible to live anywhere anymore. Climate change is also primarily caused by human action, and we have a responsibility to do our best to steer the climate in a responsible  and ethical way. 

Taxes in the U.S. right now is an excellent microcosm of what all of our realities will be when the climate disasters start coming into all of our communities.

Self-soothing with fantasy escapism is a great way to get by day-by-day, but we can’t just bury our heads in the sand and ignore the real impacts of climate change that are more and more visible every day.

Think how your actions will effect the world seven generations from now. Be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Holiday: Lantern for the Lunar New Year...a week late.

Red paper lantern for Lunar New Year

Lantern: Based on my very surface-level research, the iconic red paper lanterns displayed during Lunar New Year celebrations in China represent the bright hopeful wishes for the new year while channeling the luck and wealth attracting properties of the color red.

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I know that Lunar New Year was last Friday, February 12, 2021, but I had already written up my Mjolnir post for the 200th post on my blog and didn’t want to have to make any adjustments for my Valentine’s Day bow and arrow being the 200th post.

I’m often asked for what stats I give these items in my games. Usually, I use the cards to represent some item that already exists in the game’s rules, but I could see this lantern magically floating in a slow orbit around its owner. The lantern can be ignited or extinguished by speaking a code word. When the lantern is lit, the owner and all allies within the radius of the light can choose to reroll one d20 roll of their choice before the results are confirmed, taking the second result regardless of the result. A single individual can only take advantage of this reroll once per day.

I hope you are all trying to be as excellent as you can be for everyone in this new year.

-Ceph

Celebrating my 200th post this Thursday with Thor’s Hammer Mjolnir

Enjoy your very own Mjolnir as a gift for checking out my 200th post.

Mjolnir: Thor’s infamous hammer Mjolnir, pronounced myohl-NEER, is both a weapon of mass destruction and a symbol of divine protection. The hammer strikes unerringly and will never become lost when thrown. 

You'll notice my take on the hammer doesn't have a triquetra or some other norse adjacent symbol. This ommision is for two reasons, drawing geometric symbols in perspective is some real challenging technical drawing that my skills are not up to yet, and white supremacists really love norse symbols so I'm hesitant to include them in my art when I don't necessarily have to. White supremacy and white supremacists suck.

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I didn’t really have a plan for what to do for my 200th post. I’ve been sort of off-book lately, but I do more drawing on projects that aren’t the Zelda items project for various reasons these days. The least of which being that I need a new computer that boots faster than my current photoshop machine.

I took this hammer as a great time to experiment with screen tones. I need to personally get good with the fact that I don’t have to build absolutely everything from scratch and can use some technical brushes or texture overlays for effect.

Making art I appreciate and think is worth sharing is about using all my tools to the best of my ability rather than arbitrarily saying that something isn’t how real drawings are made. 

I am upset and not at all surprised that Trump wasn’t convicted during his second impeachment trial. I am very worried that the USA is experiencing the first steps toward a new civil war or regime change like Hitler and the Nazis coming to power in Germany. 

Stay vigilant and critical. Wear a mask. Get the vaccine as soon as your able. Be excellent to everyone. 

-Ceph

Holiday: Cupid’s bow firing a heart-seeking arrow of love.

Cupid’s bow firing a heart-seeking arrow of love.

Cupid’s Bow and Arrow: Anyone struck with an arrow shot from this bow will be overcome with uncontrollable desire. I guess this has been toned down into falling into warm romantic love in the modern retellings of the myths.

This bow is based on the bow in a statue that pops up with you use google image to search Eros’, Cupid’s Greek counterpart, bow. Turns out the statue is actually of Anteros, a sibling of Eros in Greek mythology. Turns out googling for all of five seconds to find reference images isn’t the most effective way to find accurate images. 

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Today is Valentine’s Day. I know I said I’d come back soon with normal posts from the Zelda inspired cards, but the alignment of the holiday and my update day was too much to pass up.

See you next week with some more item cards I drew, probably based on items from The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons.

Keep wearing masks, stay socially distant, and be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Not an artist: A missing scythe from the beginning of the seasons

 A missing scythe from the beginning of the seasons

Noble Sword: I have already covered the first upgrade to the sword here.

I seem to have forgotten to post the non-flaming sickle when I posted the rest of the weapons inspired by the flame sword prompt.

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Just one card for this week. I am starting a new semester and I am starting to feel like butter spread over too much bread. Online school during a pandemic is a real wild ride.

Wear a mask, practice social distance, plan to get a vaccine. These are just a few ways to be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph

Holiday: It’s groundhog’s day!

You probably expected a rodent to celebrate Groundhog's Day, but here is an 80's news microphone.

Phil Connors' Microphone: I love the 1993 cult classic Groundhog's Day. It is a comedy that works perfectly well as a surface level flick but also has incredible depth as it explores the ideas of reincarnation and karmic cycles.

For those of you not in the United States, and even if you are but don't know, Groundhog's day is a day in which a groundhog is drawn from its hole and asked if it sees its shadow. If the groundhog sees its shadow due to clear weather, six more weeks of winter are foretold. If the groundhog is met with cloudy weather and doesn't see its own shadow, then spring is soon on its way.

The holiday has its origins in German-speaking immigrants bringing their celebration of Badgerday. They used a badger instead of a groundhog, but the basic rules of the day were the same. This was celebrated on Candlemas, a Christian tradition I was only dimly aware of. How Candlemas and the, what I assume to be a pre-Christian holiday, of Badger Day became connected, I do not know.

My atheist brain's first leap when I hear Candlemas is Candle Nights, brought to you by the McElroy brothers.

COVID is still a problem, so mask up, practice social distancing, don't take unnecessary trips, and be excellent to everyone.

-Ceph