Bongo Bongo, the oddly yet aptly named boss of the Shadow Temple.

A dark spirit depicted with severed hands and a single glowing eye for a head. The battle takes place in the depths of the temple on top of a giant bongo drum. Being a spirit, Bongo Bongo is invisible and Link needs to use the Lens of Truth to see it.

The Shadow Temple and its boss are some of the creepiest parts of the game. Dark dungeons lined with torture weapons and traps, I wanted to reflect this nightmarish tone in the painting.

I started this piece by sketching the composition. I wanted to emphasize the hand and just how big and horrifying it would be to be in the battle.

Next I added a black background and started adding the highlights.

I continued to flesh out (heh heh) the details of the body and the stumps of his wrists.

I smoothed out the colours a bit and added the ground. Our hero enters the picture!

The texturing of the hands was really important to me. The game doesn’t show it very well but the original artwork showed that Bongo Bongo has a corpse-like appearance. I wanted to reflect that as best I could.

More texturing. I used a finer brush to add the sharper edges. I also added a little green underglow to reflect the eerie light in the arena.

Speaking of which, the battle in the game has the bongo surrounded by a green mist or flame. I blotted in some green blobs and used a motion blur to streak them upward.

Link comes to life! I added the Lens of Truth to his belt to show how he fights the battle. I added to the background some smokey, ghostly faces to illustrate the deathly nature of the scene.

Lastly, I brightened it up with a Brightness/Contrast filter. I also used a Liquify filter to distort the top of his body into smoke as it seems in the game that he just fades into darkness.

And that’s it!  I will be posting the other boss battles soon. Stay tuned!

Josh