Breathing in the Wild

Last Christmas brought me back to the world of video-games big time when I was gifted the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for Nintendo Switch. More than 20 years later since the last time I played a Zelda game, now I’m interested in examining the storytelling choices and world building possibilities of such a game, where the player (the audience) is participating in telling the story, engaging with the characters and putting the huge puzzle together as the story unfolds.

The visual of the game is breathtaking, and I’m sketching a scene with some of the characters in my free time (when I’m not actually playing the game):

I’m choosing what I’ll draw in the background of this image, and then I’ll decide if I’ll print this digital sketch and finish the drawing with a brush, or if I’ll do the entire image digitally. What do you think? Should I go to paper, or continue on the iPad?

I look at the visual of the Zelda game and I think of Saga.

When I first read Saga, the all-digital look of Fiona Staples’ art felt strange to me, closer to the look of a bunch of freeze-frames of animation or video-games than to the look of comics. It grew on me, as did the possibilites of drawing digitally, but even then, back in 2012 (when I discovered Saga), I was already amazed and impressed (not to say jealous) with Fiona’s capacity of making all of the art by herself in a consistent speed. Since then, I have taken over coloring my own pages of Casanova, and I have done How to Talk to Girls at Parties entirely with watercolors, and I have realized my limits in terms of how fast I draw, or how fast I ink, and how fast I color.

As much as I wanted to be more consistent, I can’t do what Fiona does.

Not many artists can.

She is amazing.

Be safe. Be kind. Be curious.
Pa-ZOW!

Fábio Moon
Moon Base, São Paulo
February 21st, 2022