Game-Art-HQ

~Challenge Submission #10~

 Ellia the slave girl and court dancer

by Shinragod

The Nintendo 64 and some of the games not directly developed by Nintendo got a quite big spotlight in our Nintendo challenge during October-November 2014.

The first submission ever for it was one of the monsters from Turok 2 as example, it was followed by a Jet Force Gemini illustration and also this one about a video game character I never heard about before.

Ellia from Eternal Darkness is a playable character there and I am thankful that Shinragod who gave Ellia this sort of spotlight also provided a detailed description of his artwork and why he chose Ellia as his challenge!

“I applauded Nintendo’s early efforts to make their own M Rated horror title for the Gamecube under their banner. While I don’t think it was an overall huge success; I do like the included ‘Video Game Insanity’ they packaged with it. Prior to this, most of the fourth wall breaking was done by a weirdo in a gasmask telling me

“You like Castlevania don’t you?”
The story itself is a Lovecraftian tale of a family’s doomed lineage as we follow a girl named Alexis reading through an ancient tome made of human skin and bones. (Lovely…) One of the tales of her ancestors involved a rather pretty looking Cambodian slave girl named Ellia. Through some misfortune she finds herself looked in an Angkor temple and dealing with all sorts of insane zombies.

I will admit, the game itself wasn’t as scary as some make it out to be; so I took some liberties here. In the game, the temple is well lit with torches to help guide you. For my own take, I wanted Ellia to look desperate and a bit uneasy as she tries to find a way out. So there are no torches to guide her. Only eerie green lights peering through the darkness as she rounds the next uncertain corner.
To make the dread more palpable, I included zombies in the doorway behind her: chasing her with their glowing green eyes and their mouths open and hands reaching out to her.
The whole game is about insanity and fearing the unknown; not being sure what will happen next. So I made it darker and more uneasy for poor Ellia as it looks like she’s trying to flee from a nightmarish scenario. It’s certainly one I don’t think anyone would want to be part of.”