FINAL FANTASY IV
SCREAMER PROJECT #669 CREATED: JULY 2022 The Screamer was a spectral, fiery creature, bellowing and shrieking as a sign of her eternal distress. Cecil Harvey and his group of freedom fighters would encounter the Screamer within the cold, dark depths of the Sealed Cave, the only such place she was known to inhabit. The reason why she had been condemned to perpetually roam those sacred caverns was unknown, but ultimately immaterial. In their quest to save the world, Cecil's group was forced to end her screaming once and for all. (In the original Japanese version of Final Fantasy IV, the Screamer was named Marid, which was a water-based genie from the original Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game. In remakes of FF4, the monster was named Lesser Marilith—a reference to the D&D creature who is half-woman, half-snake.) I thought about using a snake-like creature to build the Screamer (as well as the Grudger and Weeper, who share a game sprite design). The She-Demon from the live-action Hercules toy line and White Mamba from the Space Jam 2 toy line were two possible candidates. In the end, I went with the Funko Pop version of Red Jafar. I removed the legs from Shriek and grafted her lower body to the body of Jafar, attaching it backwards. It wasn't a perfect fusion, but paint can hide a multitude of sins. Eventually, I couldn't tell where her buttocks ended and Jafar's pectoral muscles began! A strict reading of the Super Nintendo game sprite for the Screamer would have required me to paint this project purple and orange and green. I ignored the purple, and treated the light green color as if it were yellow, which I think resulted in a more visually-consistent project. (The fact that they also ignored these colors for the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS remakes suggests that the game developers agree with me on this point.) |
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