Sinister Dead Hand sculpture

Dead Hand. Perhaps one of the most reviled Zelda bosses of all time. Not due to the tough challenge or monotonous boss phases, but due to the incredibly graphic nature of its concept. Not only was it a creepy concept for an enemy in the first place, it also managed to make its way into a children’s game, mentally “scarring” everyone who battled the creature. The enemy’s scare factor is relatively overplayed to say the least, but many jokes have been made at its expense for its strange appearance in a game for younger audiences. And I can certainly understand. It isn’t an enemy that is really that bad, but Nintendo sure opened themselves up for some jokes at their expense by going through with this enemy.

Luckily, the Nintendo 64’s graphics were not advanced enough to give us a “realistic” depiction of Dead Hand. Similar to the Wall of Flesh in the computer game Terraria, sometimes the concepts of an enemy are incredibly horrifying, but the actual product can be silly and underwhelming. However, Kanyon85 of deviantART created a sculpture of the boss that I would say is a very good representation of a “realistic” Dead Hand.

The mass stands at 4.5 inches, made out of clay, with a background done in Gimp. He said he had wanted to do a three dimensional representation of Dead Hand for a while because Dead Hand’s face “stuck with (him) so well.”

Sadly, this is the only Zelda-related sculpture done by the artist. Most of his sculptures are Silent Hill or horror based, but his gallery is certainly worth browsing, albeit a short gallery. One item that stuck out to me as well was a nice Mario Piranha Plant sculpture, so click the link below to check him out.

See the deviantART page of the above image here.

The above image is a more dramatically done portrait of the sculpture; a full, detailed shot can be seen here.

Source: deviantART