FINAL FANTASY IV
KAIN PROJECT #17 CREATED: 1999 "I did not betray, but came to my senses." Kain Highwind was a Dragoon warrior, a member of the elite Red Wings squadron, and best friend of Cecil, the Red Wings commander. He was devoutly loyal to the King of Baron, following even distasteful commands because he lacked Cecil's conviction and strength of character to question these orders. Golbez exploited this weakness in Kain's character when he secretly took control of Castle Baron, brainwashing Kain into following him. Even after he was freed from Golbez's control, there was a time when Kain couldn't be fully trusted. In the end, Kain learned to make decisions not because of who commanded him, but because of what he felt was right. By story's end, he had traveled to Mt. Ordeals to shed his former role and become a Paladin, just as Cecil had done. This was one of my first Final Fantasy IV projects, and there was blessed little reference material available. The project was strongly influenced by an early CGI illustration of Kain that appeared in Famitsu PS magazine, the same computer model that was used for the full-motion video appearing in the updated Final Fantasy Chronicles for PlayStation. What I did not have access to, at the time, was the control art for Kain, upon which his 16-bit sprite was directly based. So, the Laser Batman action figure I chose appealed to me because of the spiky protruding armor. The toy originally had closed fists, so I swapped them out with the hands from a Spider-Man action figure so he could hold his lance (and, yes, I remembered to make him left-handed). His lance was cobbled together from random pieces of plastic I had laying around. Kain is blue on the map screen but sea green during battle sequences, so I compromised by making him blue with sea green highlights. As one of my earliest projects, I'm no longer happy with this version of Kain, and I have tentative plans to do a new one some day. |
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