By Austin Wood
published
One artist's legendary 900-day run of "drawing badly" is coming to an end
We've been waiting on The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom for years, and there's a good argument to be made that nobody has felt that wait more keenly than Reddit user TheDuckPancake, a now-legendary fan artist who's been "drawing badly until TOTK" for 907 days.
If you've been on the Breath of the Wild subreddit at any point in the past two and a half years, you've definitely seen TheDuckPancake's work. Their Microsoft Paint style evokes the rage comic days of a younger internet and is instantly recognizable. They're approaching one million Reddit karma, primarily from their Zelda comics, and at this point they've covered just about every in-joke in the entire community. TheDuckPancake almost never misses a daily upload, and when they do they make up for it with multiple drawings, and they're still drawing badly even now.
Drawing badly until TOTK - Day 901 from r/Breath_of_the_Wild
With the Tears of the Kingdom launch finally just a week away, I reached out to TheDuckPancake to talk about their long, badly drawn journey. They explain that they only joined Reddit a few months before starting this series after being inspired by Reddit user WeeblesJeebles, who maintained a similar comic run for Hollow Knight Silksong until the wait finally got the better of them.
"I can't quite remember my exact thought process, but I'm pretty sure I thought, 'That looks funny, I'm gonna do that now,'" TheDuckPancake says. "Clearly, I didn't really think too far ahead, but I'm too stubborn to stop. As to whether I thought it would last this long, absolutely not. There's a couple of poorly aged comments where I said it was coming December 2021, lmao."
TheDuckPancake generally makes one drawing per day, and while they keep a list of ideas handy, they say they "never end up using them, so most of the time, it's spur of the moment." Frankly, I don't know how else you could wind up with art like this except spur of the moment. Some of their recent favorites include days 901, 900, and 861, and they belong in a museum.
Drawing badly until TOTK - Day 861 from r/Breath_of_the_Wild
Will TheDuckPancake take up the badly drawn mantle again? "I don't really have any plans for the future as of yet, but I might do something if there's DLC, but no guarantees," they say. "I'm most looking forward to making the dumbest things imaginable with Ultrahand." We've seen what they can do with a digital paintbrush, so I can't wait to see what they make with Ultrahand.
Breath of the Wild's worst feature returns in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, but the workaround is ace.
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Austin Wood
Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.
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