FINAL FANTASY IV
GARGOYLE PROJECT #629 CREATED: JUNE 2019 Traditional gargoyles were usually stone statues adorning the tops of churches and other stone structures, but it was once believed that these decorations could be brought to life through arcane magic. (What can I say? It was a time of darkness. It was a world of fear.) Perhaps that explains the genesis of the Gargoyle monsters that Cecil Harvey and his group would encounter. They were known to dwell upon Mt. Hobs, taking flight and then swooping in low to attack anyone who invaded their territory. Cunning and devious, a lone Gargoyle even disguised himself as one of the karate monks of Fabul, infiltrating the castle and sabotaging Cecil and Yang's efforts to defend the castle by unlocking a bolted door during the siege, allowing even more monsters inside. As stone creatures brought to life, Gargoyles were particularly vulnterable to ice magic, which caused their bodies to crack and crumble. (The Gargoyle retained its original name throughout the various remakes of Final Fantasy IV.) Obviously, an action figure of a gargoyle was a good starting point for this project, so I tracked down a couple of Brooklyn figures from Disney's Gargoyles series from the 1990's. The wings were removable and easily-lost, so getting two complete toys on eBay was not an easy feat. Then, I ended up melting the wings in the oven anyway when I was adding Sculpey to the toy. Sigh. Well, they were too big anyway! Since I was already replacing the wings, I ended up getting a couple of Funko Pop! figures of another Gargoyles character, Broadway, who had smaller wings. They were already the right design, so no baking in the oven was necessary. I made lots of little physical changes—adding spikes to the tail, swapping out the hands, removing a toe from each foot, reversing the orientation of the horns, redesigning the way the head attached to the body—all in service of trying to match the game sprite more closely. (In retrospect, maybe I should have resculpted the beak and ears as well. The disparity bothers me a little.) |
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