Link and Zelda Pose With the Four Champions — Print & Oil Painting

Six figures have been packed into a frame built comfortably for two, and the crowding is the point. Everyone is cropped: a shoulder leaves at the left edge, a fin leaves at the right, a raised hand is cut in half at the top. Only the two at the centre are whole, and they are the smallest heads in the picture.

The bodies around them belong to four very different species and the artist has used that for shape contrast. A Rito stands at the left in blue and white plumage with a painted face and a red feather crest; a Goron fills the upper middle, all mane and broad brown muzzle; a Gerudo woman leans in above with red hair bound in gold; a Zora reaches from the right in coral pink, long-necked, hand open in the air.

The handling is pure animation still: flat cel shading, one clean dark outline around every form, no rendered texture anywhere, and just two small gaps of pale blue sky left over at the top corners. Nobody is posed heroically. The princess has her hands folded, the boy has his eyes shut in a laugh.

Those four were the Champions of Hyrule, each chosen to pilot one of the Divine Beasts, and a group photograph is exactly the kind of image the story never lets them have for long. Part of our Zelda collection. The flower-ringed version in ink and marker assembles the same company by a different method, and Zelda among blue lotus flowers takes her out of the crowd.