Hey, look at me! I was able to squeeze in one more update for this month! (See, I'm not a complete slacker. Probably only about three-quarters of a slacker.) So my latest pair of monsters from Final Fantasy IV owe their origins to Greek mythology, thus demonstrating that the game designers weren't relying entirely on Dungeons & Dragons for inspiration (just mostly)! The Chimera and Mantcore [sic] were both particularly nasty beasts, due in no small part to the fact that you can't use traditional magical attacks to dispatch them. I look at these two three-dimensional creations and I just get angry—not because I feel like they turned out poorly by any stretch of the imagination, but because they remind me so much of the video game monsters that were such an endless source of frustration for me. I've gotten some feedback from visitors who want to see me focus on uploading some of my older custom toys (I've been modifying toys and putting pictures online since 1998 or so, so as you can imagine, there's quite a backlog). I promise to make an effort to squeeze that in amongst all my many other projects!
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This month's project is one of the most complex Final Fantasy IV projects I've attempted. The EvilMask, who doesn't appear until the last leg of the game, is a humongous roving mechanical head with fangs and wires poking out of its cranium, like some kind of twisted science experiment gone awry. It mocks you as you try to destroy it, staring at you with those fierce purple electronic eyes. To say they are the easiest enemy in the game to defeat would be a bald-faced lie. To say they're not easy to destroy would be an understatement. I had absolutely no idea where I was going to get a giant action figure head to use for this project, and I also had no idea how I was going to add all the wiring and things poking out of his skull. In the end, I feel like I really did this monster justice in three-dimensional form. By definition, half my projects are going to turn out below-average, but I'm really, really pleased with this one. I just finished up three new Final Fantasy IV projects, namely three of the most powerful dragon creatures in the game. Whether it was the Dragon Warrior series or the Final Fantasy series, you knew you were getting deep into the game, and had grown sufficiently powerful, when you were not only encountering dragons on a regular basis, but could stand toe-to-toe with them and not get roasted alive. Due to the way the monster names were often heavily truncated for space, they were known in the game only as Red D., Blue D., and D.Machin, but you can call them the Red Dragon, Blue Dragon, and Dragon Machine if you want to. Sometimes I enjoy completely rebuilding an action figure or other toy from the ground up, creating something that simply didn't exist before. After last month's exhausting projects, however, I was ready for something more comparatively simple. I often enjoy working on a project where simply painting it represents the majority of my creative efforts. I really went all out on the details, this time, and I'm really happy with the end results. This month's update showcases a particularly difficult pair of projects. I had actually started them last year, but I put them on the back burner for a bit because I really wasn't sure exactly how to build them. I always say that it's better to put a project aside and let my subconscious ruminate on it for a bit, rather than trying to push through it, forcing something into existence before it's good and ready. (And, no, I'm not just saying that because it ties nicely into the quote from Charlotte's Web I used above.) So, there are a couple of bizarre half-woman, half-spider creatures crawling about within the realm of Final Fantasy IV. One is the Arachne, with which you're likely already familiar, and the other is the considerably more obscure Talantla [sic], who is very well-hidden and is almost impossible to discover on your own during the course of a normal game. (I will freely admit that I didn't know about her until I read about her online. I don't know what I'd do without the Internet. Besides go outside and get fresh air and exercise, I mean.) Not sure what next month will bring. I have a great, big box of toys that I've bought with the express purpose of turning them into Final Fantasy IV monsters. If a particular game sprite is used, say, four times, I really need to have four copies of the same action figure lined up and ready to go before I start working on them. Obviously, that isn't the case with the monsters who have unique sprites that aren't reused during the course of the game. My point is that I still have a lot of incomplete sets. I guess time will tell! This month I thought I'd do a fairly simple set of projects so I could devote the rest of June, and most likely the month of July, towards doing something more elaborate and labor-intensive. (No, I have no idea what that actually is yet. I like the freedom of not making long-term project plans because every project idea feels new and exciting.) So, there are these three roving robotic eyeball drones that patrol a couple of dungeons in Final Fantasy IV. Both of these locations are technology-oriented, and are mostly populated with robots and machines. There's the Alert, the Last Arm, and the Searcher, all of which share an identical video game sprite. This was a fairly simple trio of projects, but I feel like they turned out really well. (For obvious reasons, I had originally thought about using the TechnoDrome eyeball from the old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toy line, but do you have any idea how much those things sell for on eBay? Sure, I'm dedicated to making these projects a reality, but I'd rather not break the bank doing it if I can help it...) There are lots of monsters from Final Fantasy IV that are just regular animals with a nasty attitude. Alligators, birds, turtles, etc. Then there are these gigantic flying eyeballs with bat wings. That's a bit more unusual. I built one of these several years ago (the FloatEye), back when I figured I'd just make one Final Fantasy monster and call it good. Then, I got this crazy idea in my head to build all of them (no, I'm not sure what's wrong with me), so I ended up redoing that one in addition to the three other baddies who share the same sprite design. Two of them, the FloatEye and Red Eye, are doin' hard time on planet Earth, while the remaining two, the dangerous FatalEye and the deadly Plague, live on the Moon. Check 'em out! Also, I started building monsters from Final Fantasy IV in May 2017, so this month marks the one-year anniversary of this grand and glorious endeavor. Usually I'll bounce around randomly from Star Wars to Transformers to Ninja Turtles projects, but this is the first time in my career as a hobbyist that I've devoted an entire year to a single franchise. In the last 12 months I've finished up 37 creatures from Final Fantasy IV. There are roughly 200 monsters and bosses from the game, so at the rate I'm going, I can expect to get them all done within five years. (Check this space in 2023 to see how far I've gotten!) I recently finished up a pair of armored knights who comprise part of the Final Fantasy IV beastiary, namely the SwordMan and the Warrior. They're not as visually interesting as some of the other monsters in the game, I admit, but I'm dedicated to building action figure versions of every one of the enemies in the game, even the more pedestrian ones. I didn't know the Knasty Knight action figure existed until I started hunting down armored knight action figures to turn into these guys. Bandai really does make toys of exceptional quality. These guys were 24 years old and yet I had absolutely no trouble working with them. (I'm not sure why they're wearing two shoulder pads on each shoulder. That just seems needlessly redundant to me.) The next project to be unveiled will be my 600th custom toy! I guess I'd better make it a really special one! We've been steadily working behind the scenes on more exciting projects... when we're not busy playing Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past on the Super Nintendo Classic, that is. These guys are some of the most iconic baddies in Final Fantasy IV. The Imp, in particular, is very likely the first monster you encounter when playing the game. He's a real pushover, too. His close cousins, the Imp Cap. and Dark Imp, are a little more powerful, but that's not saying much. Then, of course, there's the Tricker, who is just a deceitful little jerk-face who promises you that he's weak against lightning and dares you to call his bluff. (Those of you more familiar with the various remakes of the game may have no idea what I'm talking about, since these monsters were given longer, more descriptive names like Goblin Captain and Domovoi. I, however, am a video game purist. I still call Mario's girlfriend Princess Toadstool, too. There was no damn princess in any 8-bit game I ever played who was named Peach. I'm just saying.) I find that I have been steadily collecting toys and collectibles to transform into the 200+ monsters of Final Fantasy IV at a much greater rate that I've actually been building them. Spending money is easy; hacking away at toys with an X-Acto knife and gluing random parts to their bodies and mixing up batch after batch of paint, well, takes a bit more time. Factor in the fact that it's the holiday season (hoop-de-doo and dickory dock) and I manage a toy department, and you can perhaps understand that I've been slightly exhausted. Anyway, I now have an entire box filled with toys that are eventually going to be added to the illustrious roster of Final Fantasy IV monsters. It's not all of them, by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a decent start. I have a master list of all the baddies in the game along with some ideas of which toys might be suitable to represent them. (For example: I've always thought that Morrigan from Capcom's Dark Stalkers would be perfect to represent the VampGirl and VampLady. The Brooklyn toy from Disney's Gargoyles will be suitable for the Hooligan that appears in the game. When it comes to monsters like the WaterBug or the StoneMan or the AquaWorm or the DarkTree? I have absolutely no idea! Seriously, I would appreciate some suggestions.) For now, here's my latest batch of creatures: the Eagle, the Roc Baby, and the regrettably-named Cocktric, all appearing in different stages of the game. These are pretty different than a lot of the projects I've done in the past. I tend to favor cartoony media characters over realistic-looking animals, but I feel like they turned out really well. Is it a bad thing when I'm actually impressed by my own work...? My October projects got rather badly derailed by real life, but now I'm back on the horse with a bag of freshly-mixed metaphors! So, in Final Fantasy IV, there's a type of monster who is, apparently, just a floating, helium-filled bag of air. Pop one of them, and they blow up in a deadly fireball. (Technically, if you look at their game sprite, they seem to already be in the process of blowing up even before you attack them. Not quite sure how that works.) These guys were a challenge for me, partly because there aren't too many existing balloon monsters with sharp teeth on the market (though I did find one!) and partly because I had no idea how to represent this specific game sprite in three-dimensional space. Their brains are blowing up! They have puffs of smoke floating above the empty hole! How in the hell does a person actually construct that?! Well, I figured it out, and I'm reasonably pleased with the results. (I am always my own worst critic, and there are things I wish I'd done differently. However, by definition, half of my projects are going to be above average and half will be below average. There's simply no way around this.) Anyway, check out the project pages for the Balloon, Bomb, GrayBomb (spoiler: he's actually blue), and Grenade monsters. |
DAVID GRAHAM EDWARDS
Illustrator, writer, painter, sculptor, collector of toys and cats, observer of things. Categories
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