FINAL FANTASY IV
BREATH PROJECT #679 CREATED: MARCH 2024 The ephermeral creature known as Breath was found only in the deepest subterranean caverns of the Moon, leading to the dark lair of Zemus himself. The Breath was a living extension of Zemus himself, both existing and not existing, both physical and non-corporeal. Its presence served as an unmistakable sign to Cecil Harvey and his weary traveling companions that they had nearly reached the end of their long journey. The Breath would scan members of the party using the Peep spell, ostensibly reporting back to Zemus on the condition, and weaknesses, of its constituent members. It would also use a Blast attack that created a Hold effect, potentially paralyzing party members long enough for it to conduct its thorough and invasive scan. By this point, however, Cecil and his team had grown quite powerful, and were more than capable of dispatching even the strongest of Zemus' minions. (The creature was simply named Breath in the original Super Nintendo release of Final Fantasy IV, but was rechristened Zemus' Breath in the Game Boy Advance and other subsequent remakes, more accurately reflecting the monster's true role in the game.) Despite being mostly humanoid in appearance, the Breath seemed to be a very large creature, significantly bigger than Cecil and company. Also, the game sprite had a translucent aspect to it, with the background faintly visible behind it. So, I started with a 12" action figure of the Human Torch from the 2005 Fantastic Four movie, which was already orange and was made of translucent material. I cut the toy's legs off and wrapped some Tamashii flame effect pieces around it. The fire effect helped to create the illusion that the Breath had only partially taken solid form. I airbrushed the project with so many different shades of orange and yellow that he's not really translucent any longer. Oh, well. As a point of interest, the only time we see the Breath in a fully opaque state is when Rydia is summoning Caller magic against it. I had to splice together a couple of different screen shots to make the battle scene shown here a bit more presentable. |
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