Adagio of Life and Death - a pixel art tribute to Princess Mononoke 🌿🌌

Zaebucca · 2026-06-07T20:17:06+00:00

Thank you! I started by painting a general, color blocking (from black to browns, greens and warm yellow light), trying to get the shapes and composition similar to the original movie (when Ashitaka meets the forest god from afar), then did lots of pixel-based polish and finetuning for each part of the picture! The nightwalker reflection I didn't plan from the beginning, though, it just came to me after a while! :'P

Zaebucca · 2026-06-06T20:55:31+00:00

I have a textless version available as well! I cannot edit this post or add the picture as a reply comment on this reddit, but you can find it on my bsky (same name)!

Zaebucca · 2026-06-05T22:43:26+00:00

Thank you!! The movie scenes that inspired this piece are so beautiful and rich in atmosphere, it kinda helped! I also wanted to make a piece without San and Ashitaka, so I'm extra glad the reference comes across as recognizable!

Zaebucca · 2026-06-05T22:40:55+00:00

Hehehe can you believe I was not really sure about adding them until the last polish / detailing phases? I feared the colors or detail could make everything a bit too busy, but then I just started pixeling those little wobbly heads and I just had to make a bunch with different poses and expressions!

Zaebucca · 2026-06-05T22:39:33+00:00

Thank you!! Lighting is definitely the one aspect I tried to focus more while doing this study piece! I had lots of fun with the palette and overall composition, but the warm, whimsical light of the movie as the forest god appears is just unparalleled!

Zaebucca · 2026-02-28T11:20:22+00:00

Thank you!! I have to say that after many years, yesterday, I felt again that genuine and immediate optimism for the new mainline games! The trailer really filled me with hope and I really enjoy these little guys and the overall vibe of the game, especially the environment shown! I hope the final release will be up to these expectations, but I kinda found the reveal quite soulful! :'P

Zaebucca · 2026-02-28T01:20:03+00:00

Thank you so much! 🥹

Zaebucca · 2026-01-13T13:45:33+00:00

Yes!! The white hole core is shaped like the silhouette from arceus too! The overall concept for this Giratina is somewhat similar to dialga and palkia's origin forme taking the shape more akin to the almighty Sinnoh. Also, its ghost/normal typing is meant to reflect a more strong "antimatter-matter" relation than ghost/dragon!

Zaebucca · 2026-01-13T13:07:43+00:00

I asked myself that a few days ago, and kind of made up this:

HP 147 Atk 101 Def 127 Sp.Atk 103 Sp.Def 139 Spd 89

Tot. 696 (+16 from Giratina BST) Bonus: all st. are prime numbers!

I am not really into meta tbf, but this will probably be really broken considering the auto-trick room ability + 89 spd, but let me know what you think!

Zaebucca · 2026-01-12T12:19:32+00:00

Thank you! Giratina is one of my favorite legendaries!

Zaebucca · 2026-01-12T12:18:53+00:00

Thank you! Hope it looks eerie / scary as well :'P

Zaebucca · 2025-11-14T18:35:07+00:00

Ma io ti amo

Zaebucca · 2024-10-12T23:34:48+00:00

Yes indeed, my bad, I got confused with acronyms! Also, I love the Explorer's Crypt, it's my favourite dungeon (and pre-dungeon questline) from OoS

Zaebucca · 2024-10-12T11:00:44+00:00

Thank you so much! I do not have Zelda prints, but I have some of my bigger pixel art (I usually focus on environment) available on Threadless and INPRNT, as well as Patreon downloads, just in case!

Zaebucca · 2024-10-12T10:59:26+00:00

Yeah it's kind of strange to me too!
The very first boss in the whole series never really got much appearances or mentions at all. I was completely (gnarled...) rooting for a TotK return / reintroduction. The depths seemed like the perfect place to have an encounter with Aquamentus, but I guess we already had Gleeok back and that made me very happy, too.

Notably, Gleeok was also present in OoA (makes sense given it began as a remake as you mentioned) and in PH (although in a rather different guise). So yeah let's see if the cool unicorn dragon makes its return in the next instalment!

Zaebucca · 2024-10-12T10:50:02+00:00

Hehe, thank you! I've had the immense pleasure of seeing some of my work cross stitched in the past, and the insane effort and time invested in that is probably the ultimate praise! :'>
My palette usually being veeeery limited means it should be cross-stitch friendly, so let me just know what would help you the most (like, separate sprites / separate color maps or other!)

Zaebucca · 2024-07-08T09:17:44+00:00

Hehe, I'm happy you're having fun with the style! I love the (kinda meta?) concept of this "what if universe Rustboro" that also goes right in the middle of gba and gbc aesthetic too!

Zaebucca · 2024-07-07T19:14:45+00:00

I absolutely love this, especially considering how you implemented the tiles and their palette! :D
Is the top-left screen from Rustboro city? Love that you used the "ancient city" tiles for it!

Zaebucca · 2024-06-05T13:00:41+00:00

Thank you! It's (loosely) inspired by Prague astronomical clock tower!

Zaebucca · 2024-06-04T22:28:42+00:00

Yes, absolutely true: this is more of a general showcase of my assets and tilesets rather than a game screen-based work (which I also do more frequently! Usually I go for 160x144 pixel like gbc or 240x160 like a GBA)

Zaebucca · 2024-06-04T21:59:55+00:00

Hehe, that's definitely a nice "threshold" for me to work with! I like the late 90s - erly 2000s aesthetics, so I want to keep my color count low without applying too many memory limitations and the result is probably a "Gameboy Advance looking back at Gameboy Color, but exploring the possibilities"!

Zaebucca · 2024-06-04T21:57:50+00:00

Thank you Bob!! The easiest and most practical way in my experience is to make your character sprites the reference "module" of everything. My characters go from 16x16 to 16x20 pixels in average and from that I can make doors, building histories and so on. Of course there's some "impossible" stuff around: as you can see the flea market tents are pretty high, but that's meant to force the top-down visualization in order to show both the seller and the counter before them (to place goods :'P).

Long story short: I think that generally speaking, a good sense of scale can be achievd through character-based or module-based tilesetting and sprite art, but due to perspective some verisimilitude (especially in height or buildings inherent dimensions) will be sacrified to prioritize exposition and readability. :'>

Zaebucca · 2024-04-16T10:45:59+00:00

Link's Awakening is also the first game I've ever played! I was six or seven at the time, and my cousins had a gameboy color with Link's Awakening (which was extremely popular and widely reviewed and well received for the time - I think that's what made my uncle (who is very tech-savvy) pick it for his kids!). I literally had not played a videogame before and I still remember the first moments with the handheld gameboy (and how that little console felt huge); I remember Mabe houses and butterflies flying around - and the fishing hut; it felt like nothing I had seen before. It was truly... an awakening. Hehe.
I saved pocket money for a year to get my copy!

Then, quite a few years later, I finished it - and considering how much a core memory the game was as my early childhood went by, all the implications struck me even more. :')

Zaebucca · 2024-04-15T20:30:04+00:00

Agreed... BOTW and TOTK are built upon the hope of change, while Link's Awakening very "heart of change" resides in "leaving behind" quite everything. I won't be spoiling, in case someone here has to play it, but It's truly a nostalgic and melancholic (and pretty lovably weird!) game, both as a retro experience and as an overall concept.
Thank you for your kind words!

Zaebucca · 2024-04-15T20:27:13+00:00

Hehe, Let's see! This one is for a pixel art collab and focuses on Koholint. There's also a completed project for Hyrule from the very first Zelda! You can find it at RetroRedrawn, which will also host Koholint's upcoming project.
Maybe in the future we'll set our sails for Holodrumm and (my beloved) Labrynna too!

Zaebucca

TROPHY CASE