FINAL FANTASY IV
EVILMASK PROJECT #616 CREATED: OCTOBER 2018 The EvilMask was one of the most bizarre and powerful monsters that Cecil Harvey and friends would encounter during their adventures. Dwelling deep within the Lunar Subterrane caverns on the Moon, the EvilMask was a disembodied, gigantic mechanical head. Its sole function and purpose seemed to be to destroy Cecil and his companions. It was capable of casting the Wall spell upon itself as well as all party members—this not only prevented them from attacking the EvilMask with powerful magic spells, but it also effectively prevented them from healing themselves with curative magic during the battle. The EvilMask chanted some of the most potent known magical incantations, including the White, Virus, and Nuke spells. Running away from the EvilMask was impossible—so once this mechanical menace was encountered, Cecil and company were forced to fight it to a standstill or die trying. As if one EvilMask wasn't hard enough to destroy, they frequently appeared in pairs in the deepest lunar levels, trying their best to prevent Cecil and company from traveling on ahead. (The EvilMask was renamed Wicked Mask for at least one remake of the game.) I knew that if I wanted to build an EvilMask to scale with the other characters, I would have to start with a large-scale action figure and chop the head off. Luckily, I found an eBay seller who was trying to unload a badly-damaged Jakks-Pacific 31" action figure of Superman for $4.99, so I asked if he would come down on the exorbitant shipping cost if he mailed me just the head. He probably thought I was insane, but he was willing to do it. Now that I was the proud owner of a gigantic Superman head, it was time to go to work. I had to whittle away his ears and some of his hair in order to cover the top and back and sides of his head with Sculpey, smoothing it out. I also built him a neck to serve as a base, and fashioned a mechanical moustache. Then I added all the wiring, using mostly pieces of stretchy elastic and some LEGO parts. I paid close attention to the game design regarding the specific placement of the wires. I tried to keep the right side of his head as authentic as possible; we never see the left side, so I just made up something non-symmetrical that looked good to my eyes. The finished project is about 4.5" in height. The game sprite for the EvilMask is not recycled for any other characters in the original version of the game, so I only had to build one of these. The game sprite from the Super Nintendo version lacks the colors present in Yoshitaka Amano's original concept art. When the game was remade for PlayStation Portable, the new and improved game sprite includes the colors from the concept illustration. The added color really improves the look of the monster, and is closer to the artist's original vision, so I went with the PlayStation color scheme for this project. |
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