CRAWLER
PROJECT #671 CREATED: APRIL 2023 Crawlers were creatures indigenous to the Underground realm. They were caterpillar-like monsters that roamed the terrain, attacking anything they encountered. Crawlers frequently traveled with the TrapRose and GlomWing, and may have been the immature larval form of the moth-like GlomWing. Crawlers lacked quick reflexes, but could use the Slow spell to mitigate timely reactions from their opponents, as well as the Psyche spell to steal magic power from those they encountered. (The Crawler from Final Fantasy IV was loosely based on the carrion crawler from the Dungeons & Dragons tabletop role-playing game, hence the name. The Crawler appears in a few other Final Fantasy titles, but the version from FFIV is an outlier, deviating from the typical in-game appearance. In the remakes for Game Boy Advance and PlayStation Portable, the creature is called Hornworm.) The video game sprite for the Crawler (as well as the Larva and RocLarva) is interesting and kind of confusing. One might assume the head of the creature is the end that has the antennae (which matches the enhanced PlayStation Portable interpretation of the game sprite, which was given visible mouth pincers). However, many real-life caterpillars actually have false antennae on their tails to confuse predators (the Nintendo DS remake depicts the tail with false antennae, and adds cute little teeth to the other end). The original Japanese version of the game calls the Crawler by the name Misleader, which I think is meant to be a reference to this fact (it misleads you with its false head). So, this is why I put the antennae on the tail end of the creature for my project, I used a couple of LEGO pieces to build the antennae. I also wanted to capture the way the creature appears to be turning around and changing direction, so I cut apart its body segments, drilling holes through the middle and running a wire through its body pieces. I had to carve down the pieces where they touched, and I slathered a lot of paint over the gaps to help hide the fact that I chopped it up. |
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