Gallery Update: Ocarina of Time Gallery mostly complete!

I've been bad about updating here and I'm making an effort to change that starting now since I'm seeing how much the backlog piles up. Lots up updates are getting posted today. 

Oot! This is, by far, the most complete & highest-rez official art gallery for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time ever online. I spent so much time tracking down the highest quality images & cleaning up saves and scans. Find it here! I have a few maps from the Versus guide left to add, and I will probably come back and add a single render for each character and enemy, for reference, as well as a few more pieces of Himekawa art, 4koma art, sage symbols, and I may redo some of the Hyrule Histora images. Most of all: Let me know if I'm missing anything.

A note: While most of the official art gallery borrows heavily from the incredible work people have done archiving things on Wiki's, they can still be quite hard to navigate and the sections aren't always interconnected. Like Impa art may only be under a small sub directory of Impa, not in the gallery for the character or a game. It can still be pretty hard to track down an image on them even when you know what you are looking for. Some of these images don't even come up on reverse searches even though they've been uploaded for ages. I also do as much work as I can myself, (and many of these same wiki's have used hundreds of my guide and book scans for the past 20 years, I really do try not to take from places that haven't benefited from my work as well) but we all have access to different things so it really is a joint project, preserving this stuff for people to find and people look for things in different ways. Wikis are incredible for information and holding on to art anyone can add but the point of the gallery on History of Hyrule site is a little different. It's purely easy-access image archival, so people can have quick viewing access to find what they need for their project and to learn what is out there. I am also trying to encourage back traffic back to the wikis if people want transparent PNGs.

Absolutely Adorable Adventure of Link Manga-Short

Tumblr, Twitter, and Flickr user MiloScat wrote me about a Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, and this Adventure of Link manga- all of which I was completely unaware of.  I'm in love with each and everyone of them but this one is the absolute cutest thing ever. I'm posting about this one now because you can go read it in his Flickr album or find the original scans in Japanese on Ragey's site, here: randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com. I can not thank Ragey enough for discovering this work and getting it online! It blows my mind that it could have been so easily lost forever but this person found it and helped bring it to all of us.

To know more about it, visit MiloScat's Tumblr. There's a lot more at each, site too, these guys are getting a ton of cool stuff online. (The others manga will hopefully come in a bit, I'll post more when the pages are cleaned up and if I have permission to add them.)

Credit: "Famicom Manga pack-in booklet included with the May 1987 Ninensei edition of Shogakukan’s Shogaku Gakushu Zasshi magazines. The raw scans come from Ragey; he also cleaned these up before I got to them! I took these and translated them into English with the help of Horseypope."

Added High-Res Book Illustrations from Futabasha Game Book Series: Legend of Zelda: Tryfoce of Gods

 Just added roughly 27 black and white illustrations from this Link to the Past novel called Futabasha Game Book Series: Legend of Zelda: Tryfoce of Gods, published in 1992. These are some of my absolute favorite pieces of art for the series. They hit many of the major moments and I think the style is so perfect and solid. The high res scans are in the flickr gallery, here.

Scanned by Melora of History of Hyrule.

Added High-Res Book Illustrations from Futabasha Fantasy Novel Series: Legend of Zelda

Just added roughly 14 color and black and white illustrations from this Link to the Past novel, with Hyrule Fantasy (Zelda1) art. It's called Futabasha Fantasy Novel Series: Legend of Zelda and was published in 1992. I love these, so much, they're incredible. The high res scans are in the flickr gallery, here.

Scanned by Melora of History of Hyrule.

Added High-Res Book Illustrations from Futabasha Fantasy Novel Series: Legend of Zelda 2

 Just added roughly 15 color and black and white illustrations from this Link to the Past novel called Futabasha Fantasy Novel Series: Legend of Zelda 2, published in 1992. It's not my favorite style, it's very different than the game, but it still has some pretty neat pieces. The high res scans are in the flickr gallery, here.

Scanned by Melora of History of Hyrule.

Added High-Res Book Illustrations from Link's Adventurous Quest: A Counterattack from Darkness

 Just added roughly 21 black and white illustrations from this Adventure of Link novel called Link's Adventurous Quest: A Counterattack from Darkness, published in 1987 by Futabasha. It's all pretty cute. The high res scans are in the flickr gallery, here.

Scanned by Melora of History of Hyrule.

Added High-Res Book Illustrations from The Adventure of Link: The Legend of the Black

Just added roughly 22 black and white illustrations from this Adventure of Link gamebook called The Adventure of Link: The Legend of the Black Triforce, published in 1987. I really like a ton of these. The high res scans are in the flickr gallery, here.

Scanned by Melora of History of Hyrule.

 

Added High-Res Book Illustrations from The Legend of Zelda: The Mirage Castle

Just added roughly 33 black and white illustration from the novel The Legend of Zelda: The Mirage Castle by Akio Higuchi and Yuko Tanaka, 1986, published by Futabasha. These are absolutely adorable. The cover and jacket has cool art in a completely different style and I wish we could have more work by that artist too. Find the high res images in the flickr gallery, starting here.

Scanned by Melora of History of Hyrule.

Added High-Res Book Illustrations from Adventure Hero's Book no. 10

Just added roughly 59 black and white illustrations from this Hyrule Fantasy and Adventure of Link novel called Adventure Hero's Books no. 10. Published in 1987 by Studio Hard. These have some pretty cool bad guy art and scenes in them even if they're not my favorite drawings of Link. They are completely worth checking out though!

High res scans are in the flickr gallery. I put them in the Original Legend of Zelda (Hyrule Fantasy) folder simply because more of the enemies in this are from that game.

Scanned by Melora of History of Hyrule 

Newly Found Art for Zelda 1

Just added a ton of newly uncovered old art from the original Legend of Zelda game. Cool old-school, and very well done, illustrations of the bad guys, more of Link, and other stuff like item "icons." Find it over on our temporary gallery on flickr: Either on the photostream or in the LoZ set. Hope you like it!

BTW: Everything there is posted super-high-res and feel free to use anything you find to make whatever you want. When possible, credit is simply appreciated and will always count towards brownie points.

Wind Waker: Zelda Box Translations and Concept Art

Glitterberri is back from working as an official member of the Hyrule Historia localization team, and she's already graciously tackled a few pages from The Zelda Box. Which is wonderful because I've been hoping that someone would do that for a long time now. For anyone who felt disappointed that Hyrule Histoira didn't cover enough of the Wind Waker (Not that I was but I saw a few mentions of it) all you need to do is go back in time and check out the Zelda Box: a semi-rare collector's item, of game information and concept art (It's a book very much like Hyrule Historia) that showed up with the original release of that game. How is that possible, you say? Well, I scanned it ages ago when it went out of print. The art can be found in our temporary gallery, you can download the whole thing from Zelda Legends, or you can find it in a page reader on our main site in the publication's section: but I want to save the server from too many visits at once, so I'll leave it to you to seek it out if you want the downloadable zips.

Enjoy guys! And thanks to GenGAME & Zelda Dungeon for alerting me to the update.

A few page samples from the download:

The Start of the Book

I just wanted to post a few pages from the intro of Hyrule Historia, in order, to give people an idea of what kind of quality product this is. It very much mirrors the Japanese one, but they added some tiny yet special touches: like the image from the beginning of Skyward Sword to the inside of the cover and back, instead of just having blank paper like the Japanese version did.

The other reason to post the first few pages: it has the credits for the book's production team, and each one of those people deserve to be recognized for all their amazing work.

These also includes the intro by Miyamoto that Dark Horse has typed up on their blog, and then some of the pages of concept art that Kotaku and Dark Horse already posted. So it's not that I'm really showing anything new, it's that I wanted people to understand how beautifully this is laid out. If you're new here, search the "Hyrule Histora" tag on the right of the blog to find out more about this book.

 

If you skip a few pages in, the true concept art pages begin: 

 

Newly Found Old-School Zelda Art That's To Die For

Actually, it was posted by the content blog oldtypenewtype about 3 months ago but, as you can tell, I haven't been around (apologies for that are due as well.) But, seriously, if you know me at all, you know how I'm in heaven right now. I mean, this kind of art is the reason I built History of Hyrule over 10 years ago.

"oldtypenewtype:

Haruhiko Mikimoto illustration of Link & Zelda for the Famicom review of Legend of Zelda in the 6/1986 Newtype."


If you would like to see the original posts, you can go here and here for them: Link and Zelda and Link in Action.

Thanks go, once again, to Cavalier, for pointing me towards awesomeness.

By the way, read some of Cavalier’s writing if you haven’t. He helps with the manga and doujinshi localizations on the site, making rough translations a thing of beauty.

The Free 2013 Zelda Calendar (UPDATE)

Happy New Year! It's finally done: Just print it out and you're all set for 2013!
Thank you again to all the amazing artist's who participated to make this happen!

• Here's the .zip with the individual pages as files: 18 Megs
• Here's the .pdf, if that makes printing even easier for you: 23 Megs
• Here's a smaller, lower quality, .pdf for people who don't have fast connections: 4 Megs

You can also download the .zip it on my DeviantART account.
Let me know if you have any trouble with those, or if you spot any errors. I had to shorten some of the original descriptions by the artists so they'd fit the template, so be sure to check out the original pieces for the full ones! They're great.

Go here to see ALL the entries from this year's event! 

Sorry it took me so long to get this posted. I got it done a while ago but I wanted to double check it; then I got the flu, which prevented me from getting on the computer.

EDIT:
Remember, you can make your own version using the blank template and any of the spectacular 250+ entries! 

• Here's the blank "Make your Own" calendar template: 3 Megs
• All the entries for the 2013 event: "History of Hyrule" theme.
• All the entries for the 2012 event: "Music Festival" theme.

Newly Released Himekawa Art and Publication, Plus: Blank Manga Pages

Thanks Feri, for letting me know about this piece. You rock!

So, for those of you who didn't know, Akira Himekawa did the "Stained Glass Windows" official art for the Wind Waker. Proof is here: http://historyofhyrule.com/publications/manga_lttp_re_bonus/011.html

And they JUST posted this picture online. (10 year WW celebration) It's another one of their sketches in that style, and this is what they had to say about it:

"タクト販促イラストは姫川だとバレないように描く事が必要でしたが、こちらは当時ニンドリさんに頂いたページに楽しく描かせてもらったリンクw。これはイマイチ中途半端w。その後色をつけてみようかと思ったのですが挫折したままです^_^;"

(Anyone want to give an accurate translation?) It's so cute, enjoy!

If you would like to see more of Akira Himekawa's sketches and random Zelda art, please visit our album for it on Facebook.

Blank Skyward Sword "Prequel" Manga Pages:
If you didn't realize, the Page Reader Dark Horse gave to Kotaku to post allows you to save the Manga pages without any watermark or text on SOME of them, because the image, text, and watermark are often on different layers. So if you want to make avatars from them, just go to that link and save the images off of it. It's not perfect, but maybe you'll find the image you like. You can either right click on them, or just drag them to your desktop. Just don't ask me how to do it on a Mac.

That promotional manga Akira Himekawa did for the Chinese release of Ocarina of Time 3D got printed into a little book. It happened just a little while back, but I didn't notice it until now. If you're a collector, it might be fun to track down!

Info for it can be found on their site: http://www.himekawaakira.com/02what's%20new!/index%20.html

Again, if you would like to read it, it was translated into English by the Zeldanime gang.