#oot redesign

There are three aristocratic zora families, which I don’t have names for yet, so I’ll call them the royals, the blues, and the reds. Design-wise, the royals are deep-sea creatures, and the reds and blues are…. Well. Red and blue. Politic-wise, the blues are steeped in Zora tradition (matriarchs, holidays, art, etc), the reds are more progressive (shift in political systems, acceptance, athletics), and the royals are devoted to getting the Hylians away from the Domain (quality of life, feeding the hungry, recovering lost soldiers). Since the disappearance of the last zora queen (who was a royal) the domain has been divided in three, debating over who should take the unoccupied throne. The blues want Princess Ruto to rule, the Royals want to focus on finding and recovering the previous queen, and the reds want Prince Sidon.

Mikau, the Sage of Water, distanced himself from the world of the blues because he wanted to pursue music with his childhood friends instead. He’s haughty and arrogant but well loved by a lot of the domain. A lot of Zora elders don’t like him because he’s. Emo. He’s got kind of a Jacob V Edward thing with Sidon tho; a lot of people in the domain like to debate on who’s hotter bc 👍 I think it’s FUNNY

Mido was the easiest to draw because he's pretty much exactly like his canon design, I only made some small tweaks. The little elements that I did add were to further emphasize the peter pan-ness of his look-- I don't know if that was intended by the developers originally designing him or not, but esp with the upwards pointy hat and the green clothes, Mido happens to already look very peter pan-y. This works for me because I feel like Mido really well showcases some of the negative aspects of peter pan as a character (the story itself is a whole other industrial size oil barrel of worms) ie his immaturity and selfishness, so I enjoyed leaning into that reference a little. Either way he's the pure embodiment of 'little shithead' and I enjoy him very much actually.

Fado was also pretty easy to put together, I sort of melded some elements from Wind Waker Fado because (tosses Fado at you) woe transgender kokiri be upon ye. This version of Fado has yet to gender-trans tho, that's kind of something that's just brewing for now. I'm having a lot of fun with them in the rewrite as a very deadpan, monotone and blunt kind of character. The thing that I ended up messing with the most was actually their hair colour. All the Kokiri in the game have blond hair and blue eyes (except Saria who has green hair and blue eyes) and I thought that was cringe so Fado is the only one in this lineup who still has blue eyes, but I made them very icy and piercing in a sort of "imm shaking im so scared please put some brown contacts on her" sort of way (slash ref)

Saria's a sweet little muffin cutie patootie precious cabbage roll sweet potato pie. I made her the shortest of this lineup, but her and Link are actually very close in height. Overall her design is also pretty much the same, but I changed up the colours all a bit bc a) Kokiri diversity reasons and b) oh god so much green help help me she was so so green oh my god it's so saturated and intense aaahhhhh. So as a whole I made her whole colour palette darker and slightly less saturated, and her hair is still green but a much darker forest-y green. Plus I made her shorts longer because she's a kid who plays in the woods all day she should have more suitable outdoor shorts.

I actually hadn’t initially planned on changing Sheik’s main outfit, the blue stealth garb, as much as I did, particularly in the case of getting rid of the head bandages since those were pretty much the only part of the design I didn’t dislike. But I found a particular reference image while looking for actual historical ninja garb for inspiration and I really liked how the hood and fabric almost-armour looked, so I incorporated it! Now this gives him the opportunity to dramatically pull his hood up and down at key moments, making him become either more or less mysterious depending on how mysterious and angsty he wants to be.

The Sheikah Eye is semi-concealed under the top layer of his garb. The Sheikah have been submerged in the shadows for a long time, reclusive and secretive for their own safety-- these days, most common people in Hyrule don’t even know they exist. However, they are starting to become more visible again, and Sheik actually plays a big part in that.

Sheik has been travelling Hyrule for some time, now, and has not been home in years, unable to return to Kakariko village until his own quest is complete. He’s had some rough tumbles of his own, and at some point lost one of his vambraces, hence the layer of bandages on one arm. He hasn’t had the chance to replace it properly, yet.

Instead of the regular stripes, I borrowed the swirling patterns from the ancient Sheikah tech of botw, like I did with Impa as well. I feel like this does a good job of tying the aesthetics of the different games together and maintain common visual elements, while still keeping an ancient feel to it and signalling that this garb is from a different, distinct era.

The base suit is meant to be quite tight-fitting, but it’s gotten kind of loose because Sheik is too on-the-go to feed himself properly smh. Bulk up Sheik!!!

The second outfit is as casual as Sheik gets. This is what he would wear just hanging out in Kakariko village. It looks plain, but the beads show that he is a fully-fledged warrior monk. He has the Eye tattooed on himself as is traditional for sheikah monks, though at this point in history it is tattooed on the back, not the forehead like in both earlier and later eras, further representing the hidden-ness of the Sheikah.

This look is largely based off the clothing of Impaz from twilight princess, who is heavily implied to be Sheikah. Impa’s outfits also share many of these same elements.

I have two outfits for her here-- the first is what she would have worn around Hyrule Castle and castle town during the day, somewhat casual but still ready for a fight. The pattern on her jacket and outer skirt panels are based on the patterns on the tops of the ancient Sheikah towers from botw. The rest of her outfit are based on old japanese dress and the outfit worn by Impaz in Twilight Princess, who is implied to be Sheikah and tp is suitably close to oot on the timeline.

The second outfit is her full armour, though sans cape. This one is more obviously samurai inspired. The closest element in this design to her original outfit is the mostly blue colour palette, though I did also inject bits of red as well, for the sheikah vibe as well as the fact that I associate oot with the colour red.