This month, the kids are out of school again (thank you, COVID-19, for your systematic attempts at demolishing the public education system). So, I've spent a lot more time than normal yelling at children between the ages of eight and twelve—and then when that's done, I come inside and yell at my own kids as well. Also, my wife has been home recovering from surgery not once, but twice (what are the odds that carpal tunnel syndrome would strike in both her hands?). So I've been making her peanut butter toast and folding laundry and the various other things that I do in my role as her own personal emergency back-up hands. Not a lot of time left in the day to do very important , very silly things like painting toys.
About halfway through November I realized I still hadn't started any Final Fantasy IV projects. Finally, I said to myself, "Well, I'll just cheat and do the TinyToad—it will be super simple, super easy, and then I can pretend I actually did a real project this month!" And even that didn't happen. (I could teach classes on how to be lazy, but it seems like way too much work.) So, quite possibly no update for this month. Not unless I suddenly feel inspired right after Thanksgiving and decide what the world really needs is for me to crank out a TinyToad in a few days!
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This update actually features two months' worth of projects, because I'm lazy and couldn't be bothered to take or upload photographs. (Hey, you try working ten-hour shifts and see if you have the energy to do anything when you get home!) So the first of these isn't actually a Final Fantasy IV monster at all, but rather a helpful creature you encounter within the game. The Big Chocobo is a massively oversized bird whose role in the game is to store weapons and items for you when you don't need them in your immediate possession. He's so cute that I couldn't have neglected to build some physical representation of him (and I think you'll agree the toy I found was absolutely perfect for him). Also, I took a stab at constructing two of the more unusual aerial monsters from Final Fantasy IV, namely the Raven and the Roc. They're sort of a weird bird-lizard hybrid, which means that since I started with a pretty normal bird-shaped toy, I had to do a lot of physical reconstruction in order to approximate their flying forms as we see them in the video game. What's pretty wild is that I managed it entirely by gluing parts to other parts, requiring no sculpting and making this a kitbash in the truest sense of the word (which is fine by me, since nothing grinds my gears worse than having a project melt in the oven!). |
DAVID GRAHAM EDWARDS
Illustrator, writer, painter, sculptor, collector of toys and cats, observer of things. Categories
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