Hey! Sketchbook Pages!
A couple of weeks ago I was playing Final Fantasy IV. I actually managed to get to the very entertaining “The Male Characters Suddenly Decide to Kick the Female Characters Out of the Party for No Discernible Reason” cut scene before stopping. I usually end up stopping when I get to Edge for some reason, but I managed to persevere this time, probably because my computer was non-operational.
I was also attempting to illustrate a fairy tale as a comic strip. I didn’t get very far, but I’m still working on it off and on. It was excessively gory and bawdy and delightfully bizarre, totally not the type of thing I would want to show my mother or post on a Bluehost-hosted site. It is possibly my favorite one right now, narrowly overcoming Hacon Grizzlebeard, which is about a prince that gets a princess preggers with his illegitimate child by utilizing what are possibly the smoothest moves known to the whole of mankind.
That’s why I ended up with this page in my sketchbook:
At the top are two SquareSoft-style dwarves. One is shouting the confusingly public password of the Dwarf Castle (SAY IT WITH ME!), while the other is engaged in firing his lazor.
The bottom half is the character design for the shepherd’s daughter that ends up marrying a a giant, talking snake-monster before going on the the most inexplicable adventure ever dreamed up by mashing a bunch of existing folklore themes together. The story never actually gives her a name, instead preferring to call her the shepherd’s daughter or the young queen, depending on whether she has married the prince yet in that particular stage of the story. I call her Zinnia because her most outstanding attribute is the fact that she does not wilt, not matter what strange and frightening things are occurring around her. Also, I find her to be colorful and easy to understand, which is pretty much how I feel about Zinnias. If they get too dry, they droop at bit, but after you give them water, they recover quickly and stand out just as brilliantly as before.
It also includes a messenger. I like his snark and I want his hat.
I also ended up drawing another Final Fantasy IV related page a few days later.
This is basically how I imagine a few of my characters would react if they were to get a hold of a copy of FFIV that supported multiple players, a system capable of playing it, and were made to play the character that had the closest sounding name to their own. Ed certainly seems to be enjoying himself, even though he is far too old to be playing video games.
They’re fighting the Trapdoors, a series of irritatingly strong mid bosses that block every single door in the Sealed Cave dungeon. Those battles are button mashers because a Trapdoor can kill one of your dudes in one hit, and the only way to stop it is to beat it down really fast before it was a chance to do so. I was very much reminiscent of Ed and Cecelia when playing against one. I alternately shouting “CESSHY! CESSHY! CESSHY!”, “JUMP, KAIN! JUUUUUMP!”, “EDGE! ATTACK! ATTACK NOW!”, “STOP HAVING TURNS, ROSA! WE DON’T NEED YOU!” “RYDIA! QUAKE NOW!” “AUUUUGHH! EDGE DIED! WHEN IS ROSA’S TURN COMING?!”
The battles were extra exciting because you have to go through about 15 of these dorks before you are able to get to a save point.
I’m tired now. I’m going to bed.