I knew December was going to be a crazy month (I work retail and there is no shortage of customers who forget that Christmas falls on the same calendar day every year), so I figured I would tackle a relatively simple project. As you might imagine, it's much easier to build a single project than it is to create two or three or four identical projects! The Machine is a Final Fantasy IV monster that's been on my to-do list for a really long time, but it wasn't until several false starts that I was finally able to dig in and do it justice. I really do believe that my subconscious mind sometimes has to mull these things over for a long time before I finally attempt them. Once I finally started, the 20+ random pieces that I incorporated into its design availed themselves to me quite readily, as if I'd known what they would be all along!
0 Comments
For the month of July, I decided to tackle a trio of troublesome tricksters from Final Fantasy IV who have been on my how-the-heck-am-I-going-to-actually-build-these list for a long while now. They're the Grudger, the Screamer, and the Weeper, creatures who look like female humanoids from the waist up, but from the waist down, they're like serpentine apparitions or something. I had no idea how to construct an action figure that was half woman and half ghost-snake. Sometimes I have to let these project ideas percolate in my subconscious for a while. Eventually, if I let my brain work on it long enough, I figure out how to move forward with these projects. I'm rather pleased with the end result, especially the way the shoulders and upper torso for the Funko Pop toys I used ended up being repurposed to serve as the hips, and the suggestion of legs, on the final projects. Come check it out! These projects are also notable as they are the first that I've photographed with my smart phone instead of my old Kodak digital camera. It's unfathomable to me that a single dedicated device that is designed to only do one thing (take pictures) is inferior to this other device that's got all sorts of random features jam-packed into it (television, computer, alarm clock, camera, flashlight, and I think maybe it even works as a phone sometimes too) but here we are. The August update includes a set of four companion projects that I started a number of months ago, but I honestly wasn't entirely sure how to approach. Sometimes it's really useful to just set a project aside and let my subconscious mull it over for a bit. You'd be surprised how frequently this ends up being beneficial. Anyway, among the Final Fantasy IV monsters are a subset of undead creatures who are much more difficult to kill with conventional weapons. To destroy them, you can actually use magic or items designed to heal your party members, which is a crazy game mechanic but kind of makes sense in a way. During the course of the game, Cecil and his buddies cross paths with numerous unliving monsters including the Zombie, the Ghoul, the Revenant, and the Ghast, who only appears once during a boss fight. I encountered an interesting problem with these guys, since two of the would-be palette-swap monsters actually ended up using the exact same colors in the course of the game (the Revenant cannot be visually distinguished from the Ghast). Come read about how I approached this problem, and let me know in the comments if you agree with my decision or not! |
DAVID GRAHAM EDWARDS
Illustrator, writer, painter, sculptor, collector of toys and cats, observer of things. Categories
All
|