Well, it took me some extra time, but my March projects are ready to unveil, and only a few days late. For those who don't know, in the last leg of the endgame dungeon from Final Fantasy IV, the depths of the Moon are inhabited by two intangible creatures who seem to be extensions of the villanous Zemus, called Zemus' Breath and Zemus' Mind in some versions of the game. It's as if Zemus sent them as advance scouts to warn him of the arrival of Cecil Harvey and his band of warriors, and they're among the toughest baddies in the game to successfully destroy. This is a project I struggled with, if we're being honest, but I think the end result was satisfactory. Check out the links and see if you agree with me! (Go ahead and leave a comment or three, if you'd like. I promise I don't bite. Very often.)
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So I have discovered that I cannot wait until three days before the end of the month and then reasonably expect to have a completed project for that month. Gee, it's almost like a month-long project takes a month to do, or something. Who knew? With that said, I actually might have gotten it done were it not for the assorted technical difficulties I was experiencing with my airbrush. They say it's a poor worker who blames his tools, but it's also the sign of a poor craftsman to expect to do a good job with inadequate tools. Lately, every time I break out the airbrush, it refuses to cooperate for some unspecified reason. I never know quite what that reason actually is. Do I not have enough spray propellant? Is the nozzle clogged? Is there not enough paint in the jar? Am I holding it wrong? Is it a day that ends in "y"? I can never be sure of the precise problem. At this point I've chalked it up to "sometimes the damn thing works and sometimes it doesn't." But, here's a sneak preview of what I've been working on this weekend. They're not quite where I want them to be, but they're getting close. (If you recognize them, congratulations. You might be a fan of Final Fantasy IV.) In the meantime, I need new paints, a new airbrush, and maybe a new hobby. Something that doesn't cause this much frustration and anguish. Like domesticating an alligator, perhaps, or learning to juggle chainsaws. I spent most of February fretting that I hadn't been working on a project for February. Then there got to be like two days left in the month (and, being a leap year, one of them was essentially a bonus "extra" day that I had absolutely no business counting on being there) and I asked myself, what sort of project could I reasonably expect to finish, photograph, and upload in such a short space of time? Well, the answer is staring you in the face, and is thinking right now about casting a spell and turning you into a small frog. Yes, of course, it's the TinyToad, the ever-loyal, ever-leaping follower of the ToadLady. It also holds the distinction of being the very smallest Final Fantasy IV monster I've worked on—smaller, even, than the TinyMage! That's all for this month. Perhaps I will be more productive in March. It would be hard not to be, if we're being fair. For January I decided to tackle a project that's been bugging me for a while. I knew I wanted to use a specific action figure body, and attach a specific action figure head, but the logistics of how to accomplish it eluded me for a while. I pondered various solutions (cutting off faces, neck transplants, all sorts of grisly things) until the solution finally came to me. Anyway, I finished up the Medusa and Gorgon, two ladies with slithering reptillian tresses, who were shamelessly stolen from Greek mythology for their appearance in Final Fantasy IV. (As a point of interest, an early Medusa appears in a much lower pixel resolution in the primitive 8-bit Final Fantasy for NES as well.) I only have to do (counts on fingers) three more projects in 2024 to beat my productivity for 2023. That's kind of sad. But, there are also eleven months left in the year, so I'd say the odds of that happening are honestly pretty good! I knew December was going to be a crazy month (I work retail and there is no shortage of customers who forget that Christmas falls on the same calendar day every year), so I figured I would tackle a relatively simple project. As you might imagine, it's much easier to build a single project than it is to create two or three or four identical projects! The Machine is a Final Fantasy IV monster that's been on my to-do list for a really long time, but it wasn't until several false starts that I was finally able to dig in and do it justice. I really do believe that my subconscious mind sometimes has to mull these things over for a long time before I finally attempt them. Once I finally started, the 20+ random pieces that I incorporated into its design availed themselves to me quite readily, as if I'd known what they would be all along! After steadily working on these Final Fantasy IV projects for like four years, I took a break for a long time. It wasn't due to a lack of love or enthusiasm for the idea, but rather due to some nasty paint-eating parasites that keep invading my home and drinking all my model paints. I know it sounds like I'm making that up, and it's because I totally am, but it's more amusing than the actual reason. which is that I was going through some personal stuff. So, anyway, I'm slowly easing back into these projects, and I thought that I could probably handle building a single action figure this month instead of two or three or six identical ones (which is often the case when it comes to monsters with recycled game sprite designs). Jinn is one of the summoned monsters called upon by Rydia, and he's a bizarre half-man, half-goat hybrid who was an interesting challenge to build, partly because it was tough to find the right starting point. No fewer than three action figures sacrificed themselves to bring him to life! After a much longer hiatus than I intended, I've finished up some very small projects based on some of the monsters of Final Fantasy IV. This trio of squishy, multi-legged creatures all share a game design, but through the magic of color palette swapping, the game designers were able to create three separate and distinct enemies—the Crawler, the Larva, and the RocLarva. Not making any excuses for my absence this time. The last 47 updates should serve as a testament to the fact that I've been committed to making these projects happen, but sometimes real life gets in the way. Depression is a thing. I spent all of September thinking about how I should really write a "sorry I didn't do any updates in August" post, and now suddenly it's October.
So, yeah. I don't know. For the month of July, I decided to tackle a trio of troublesome tricksters from Final Fantasy IV who have been on my how-the-heck-am-I-going-to-actually-build-these list for a long while now. They're the Grudger, the Screamer, and the Weeper, creatures who look like female humanoids from the waist up, but from the waist down, they're like serpentine apparitions or something. I had no idea how to construct an action figure that was half woman and half ghost-snake. Sometimes I have to let these project ideas percolate in my subconscious for a while. Eventually, if I let my brain work on it long enough, I figure out how to move forward with these projects. I'm rather pleased with the end result, especially the way the shoulders and upper torso for the Funko Pop toys I used ended up being repurposed to serve as the hips, and the suggestion of legs, on the final projects. Come check it out! These projects are also notable as they are the first that I've photographed with my smart phone instead of my old Kodak digital camera. It's unfathomable to me that a single dedicated device that is designed to only do one thing (take pictures) is inferior to this other device that's got all sorts of random features jam-packed into it (television, computer, alarm clock, camera, flashlight, and I think maybe it even works as a phone sometimes too) but here we are. For the month of June I decided to put together a pair of fairly simple projects—ones that didn't require a lot of structural rebuilding or modifications. Gives me more time to work on that obstacle course of a backyard, don't you know. (I think I'm going to need to rent a steam shovel or something to get that clothesline post dug out.) Anyway, the game features a couple of reptillian baddies, the Aligator and the Crocdile (yes, I know how to spell, thank you), both of whom dwell exclusively in the underground watery passages beneath the castles and towns our heroes call home. In other words, yes, Final Fantasy IV has alligators in the sewers. Next month I may attempt something more ambitious. It's hard to say. As I've said before, I don't like to necessarily lock myself down and promise specific projects here, because a rigid schedule tends to stifle the creative process. But I can promise you with certainty that I will either a) unveil a new Final Fantasy IV monster here in about one month's time, or b) I won't. It's definitely going to be one of those or the other. |
DAVID GRAHAM EDWARDS
Illustrator, writer, painter, sculptor, collector of toys and cats, observer of things. Categories
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