Yoshiyuki Oyama – The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Yoshiyuki Oyama is quite the well-known character designer that works for Nintendo, as well as taking on other different roles such as being an art director, object designer, enemy designer, effect artist, concept artist and illustrator. Since the start of his career in 2000, he has worked on several different Nintendo games that have risen to critical acclaim and beloved by fans, some of the titles that he has worked on include:

Mikau, the Zora guitarist – The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (2000)

Professor E. Gadd – Luigi’s Mansion (2001)

• The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask – Character Designer, including characters such as Mikau the Zora guitarist (2000)
• Pokémon Stadium 2 – Minigame Modelling (2000)
• Luigi’s Mansion – Character Designer, including Professor E. Gadd (2001)
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker – Character Designer, Illustrator/Concept Artist (2002)
• Pikmin 2 – Character Designer (2004)
• The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures – Character Designer (2004)
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess – Lead Enemy Designer (2006)
• Wii Fit – Art Director (2007)
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl – Supervisor (2008)
• Wii Sports Resort – Design Support (2009)
• Wii Fit Plus – Art Director (2009)
• New Super Mario Bros. Wii – Design Support (2009)
• The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword – Lead Designer, Object Designer, Effect Artist (2011)

Link and Princess Zelda’s final battle with Ganondorf

However, in this post I’m primarily going to focus on Oyama’s character design and illustrative work the he has produced for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker in 2002, which is probably his most recognisable work even thirteen years later. His work features a beautifully cartoony, cell-shaded art style which had never featured in any Legend of Zelda game before it. Every previous Legend of Zelda title was either attempting a more realistic approach to it or was pixelated due to the limitations of the games consoles that they were on. As beautiful as this art style was back 2002, upon the games release it got heavy negative criticism for fans and critics alike, saying that it was too childish and that it was no way near as mature as the previous Legend of Zelda titles. Fans and critics were expecting a more realistic looking Zelda game, which wasn’t released until 2006 in the form of Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. However, as soon as people started to play the game, their opinions quickly changed into a positive one because the cartoony cell-shaded art style really gave the entire game tonnes of charm, making the bright and colourful cast of characters and beautiful scenery stand out from any other previous game in the Legend of Zelda series. This cell-shading art style became so popular since the Wind Waker that it was also used in many other Legend of Zelda games such as: Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks.

There are many reasons why I adore Yoshiyuki Oyama’s art style for the Wind Waker is that it manages to show off huge amounts of personality when it comes to its characters, primarily the games protagonist, Link. Just the facial expressions alone are so different from one another, from Link’s happy expressions when he’s interacting with other characters to his angry expressions when he has drawn the Master Sword and attacking hoards of enemies. Thanks to this art style, the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker probably has one of my favourite incarnations of the green-hatted hero because it has one of the most charming personalities in the entire franchise.

Original Wind Waker concept art by Yoshiyuki Oyama.

Artwork for the high definition remake of the Wind Waker for the Nintendo Wii U.

In addition to this, 11 years later Nintendo decided to create a HD remake of this iconic Legend of Zelda game to the Wii U games console. With the vastly upgraded visuals contrasting from the graphics on the Nintendo Gamecube that the original debuted on, the HD visuals somehow made this art style even more gorgeous due to new and improved lighting and shading in the game, which made the cell-shading art style pop out even more and made it even more vibrant. Comparing the visuals from the original version and HD remade version, it made everyone realise that one of the best things about this art style that despite that the game is over 10 years old, the visuals simply refused to show any age whatsoever. Other games in the franchise such as 1998’s Ocarina of Time, 2000’s Majora’s Mask and even 2006’s Twilight Princess (which came out after Wind Waker) have really showed their age due to attempts at making the franchise look more realistic but actually it you could see nothing but polygons in the games visuals which really took you out of the experience of those games.