| CECIL (DARK
KNIGHT)
PROJECT #23
CLASSIFICATION: KITBASH
BASE FIGURE: MYSTIC KNIGHTS OF TY RA NOG ROHAN
PARTS USED: XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS VELASCA (MASK)
MATERIALS USED: HOBBY KNIFE, SUPER GLUE, PAPER CLIPS, MODELING PUTTY;
ACRYLIC PAINTS
"I am just a Dark Knight, with no courage to disobey
His Majesty."
Preamble: Cecil is the main focus
of Final Fantasy II, learning about his own heritage, loyalty, and
humanity during the course of his world-spanning adventures. As leader
of the Red Wings, his fleet of airships cannot be matched by any force in
the realm. Though he possesses powerful abilities as a Dark Knight,
there remains a dark and evil force behind the kingdom of Baron, one which
he cannot hope to overcome until he embraces the Light.
When I originally set out to create a set of
Final Fantasy II action figures, I was originally planning only to
build the five characters who comprise the final party configuration at the
end of the game. While Cecil isn't my favorite character, he does undergo
a major character metamorphosis during the course of the game, and therefore
deserves an additional action figure in his likeness.
The troublesome thing about the characters of
Final Fantasy II is that the appearance of the characters is
not consistent throughout the game. The characters were originally
designed by Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano, but these designs were significantly
simplified for the 16-bit pixelated sprites. Furthermore, the appearance
of the characters is different during monster battles than their appearance
on the world map, which in turn differs from the close-up subscreen portraits
in the game. There were also three-dimensional models rendered for
several characters, which were based on the original character artwork, developed
for the computer-animated trailer added to the Final Fantasy Chronicles
game compilation for PlayStation (my images of these CGI models were taken
from an issue of the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu PS). Rather
than basing my project on a single iteration of the characters, I tried to
come up with a composite that reflected all of these.
Construction: Much of what I had
already done with my Paladin Cecil figure I had to do again with Dark Knight
Cecil. I removed the extra armor plates from the
original figure, and
whittled off the dragon-themed decorations on his chest and arms.
According to the CGI model, Dark Knight Cecil has knee guards, so I
left those in place this time, whittling them down to a rounder shape.
The hardest part of this project was finding a
mask for him to wear. I settled on the tribal mask that came with my
Xena: Warrior Princess Velasca figure. After chopping off the
hair or whatever it was that hung off the back, I made the eye slit a bit
larger with my X-Acto knife and chopped the horns off the forehead. Super
glue didn't work on this type of plastic, so I ended up drilling holes into
the horns and through the sides of the mask, holding them together with pieces
of a paper clip. (The mask is still removable, but he's not very pretty
underneath since I had to slice off part of his forehead to get the mask
to fit properly.) The subscreen portrait troubled me for a time, since
Cecil's eyes aren't visible through the Dark Knight mask. I finally
decided that this was just creative license on the part of the artist, and
that his eyes should actually be visible since you can see them during battles
and on the world map.
For his paint job, I went with a flat black for
the parts that weren't covered in armor. The paint I used for his armor
was a mix of blue and silver and black (I wanted it to look like it was made
from steel) with silvery-blue highlights. His sword and shield are
gloss black with blue-silver trim, as befits a Dark Knight.
Comments: Considering how popular
Final Fantasy II was, I'm really surprised there wasn't more official
merchandise made. Even in Japan (where it's known as Final Fantasy
IV), there were only a handful of peripheral artifacts produced. Go
figure.
I've also just noticed that after
I erased the background
for his subscreen portrait and the background becomes the same color as his
horns, it suddenly looks like those aren't horns at all, but strands of hair.
I suspect this was the intention of the artist, but somebody
else colored the portrait to make it look like those were horns on his
helmet. |
