Well, I finally received Phantom Hourglass for Christmas this year. I must say, it is a fantastic game! I can only hope more Zelda games will be like this one. It is truly revolutionary! Phantom Hourglass moves the series forward just as Ocarina of Time did over six years ago. It’s a great time to be a Zelda fan!

Now that I’ve had a chance to play a bit of the game and get a feel for what its about, I finally present to you the Phantom Hourglass CD Art. Check it out in the Art section.

I apologize for not having the Phantom Hourglass art finished much earlier. There were two reasons for this. One, I had only a vague idea what Phantom Hourglass was all about. I did not want to create an uninspired piece of art that looked similar to The Wind Waker’s art. Second, I wanted to play the game to find the appropriate imagery and inspiration for such art. Now, after playing a good portion of the game (and loving every minute of it), I decided what look I wanted to achieve with this piece.

You see, I really wanted to avoid a Wind Waker replica. I knew I wanted the Phantom Hourglass art to feature the ocean, but the challenge was to make it look interesting and completely different than The Wind Waker. I knew that having another image of an ocean would be a given. For that same reason, this was the most difficult cover to work on, in terms of planning and the imagery I wanted to achieve. I had started working on the design for this cover months before the game was released in the US… and only until last night was I able to complete the look I was happy with.

Now for those of you who’ve all ready played through the game, you might think my cover art is a bit too dark for the game. On one hand, you’d be right. On the other, the image of the ghost ship on the cover of the box art - and the sequence of events that lead you to the ship in the game - stuck out so clearly in my mind, I knew it had to be the focus of ZREO’s cover art.

I had stumbled upon a magnificent painting of a ghost ship that I simply had to include in this art as well (unfortunately and oddly enough, I couldn’t find an artist name to credit for this contribution)! Naturally, that led to a dark and mature tone for Phantom Hourglass’ cover art - a great contrast from The Wind Waker’s cover design. I hope you all like the way it turned out!

~MoZ