Cactoids are illegal in Michigan

[MmM]

The lighting conditions were perfect for some outdoors, no-flash photography, so I took this figure out for a "desert" photo shoot early this morning. Whilst I was happily clicking away, a police officer felt the need to drive over and find out what I was up to. Now, to be fair, there has been a string of vandalism in that general area in recent weeks, but it's a public trail system and I wasn't doing anything even remotely suspicious/illegal. The only logical conclusion that one can come to is that the police are prejudiced against Cactuars (one probably 1,000 Needled him at a traffic stop or something when his shift began). In my opinion, the real crime was the officer's lame "Are you trying to put Humpty Dumpty's wall back together?" joke (I was using the sandy remnants of a crumbling cement foundation for the shoot). Har-de-har-har.



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[Use]

You live in Michigan? Huh.

[Dreadopp]

Those are very nicely done. :)

[EarthQuake]

I LOVE THOSE GUYS.

Good work.

I remember Vaan and Penelo getting their asses kicked the first time I tried taking out the cactoid mark (the one with the flower). It would get so close to killing it and it would run off and make me attract like half a dozen more monsters when I followed.

[TheeXile]

That game was one of the worst grind fests I've ever endured but in some ways it was worth it. The art was one of them.

Nice work.

[Shapeless]

Lol that Officer was probably driving down the highway thinking "I should have said he looks like a real prick" and then slapped himself upside the head. I'm not familiar with the character but I think he's got alot of character and you did a great job on it.

[MmM]

These three were all entries for a Robots/Cyborgs themed contest at Figure Realm.com. They've been done for a while, but I wasn't allowed to show them on other sites until the contest concluded.

Chocobot (Gameboy: Final Fantasy Adventure/Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden)



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NapalmMan.EXE (Gameboy Advance: Mega Man Battle Network 2/5)



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Launch Octopus (SNES: Mega Man X)



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Earthquake: I think I got my butt kicked by Mr. Cactoid a few times too before I managed to topple him.

TheeXile: FF12 is my absolute favorite out of all the Final Fantasy games (my gave file says I spent 169 hours playing it, and that's not even counting the times my party got annihilated and the time spent wasn't saved), and I've played through them all except for FF11. True, there's a lot of grinding, but that's true of just about any RPG that uses experience points for character progression.

Shapeless: See, now your joke would have been at least mildly amusing. Actually, I don't think he even saw the Cactoid (it's only an inch-and-a-half tall after all), he never got out of his squad car.

[Remmirath]

The second picture on top reminds me of Nash's avatar on the ZDoom forums. :P

[Use]

Probably because Nash's avatar is a cactuar.

[Dreadopp]

Cool, Megaman bosses. They all look really good. :)

[Coopersville]

I applaud the extreme amount of detail on the Chocobot. Launch Octopus looks especially nice, as well.

[TheeXile]

MmM said:

TheeXile: FF12 is my absolute favorite out of all the Final Fantasy games (my gave file says I spent 169 hours playing it, and that's not even counting the times my party got annihilated and the time spent wasn't saved), and I've played through them all except for FF11. True, there's a lot of grinding, but that's true of just about any RPG that uses experience points for character progression.

I liked it too. Managed to beat Yiazmat in under an hour in my final run. ;)

But still. Even Square confessed they basically padded out the game's grinding unnecessarily. :/

[MmM]

I have to admit I gave up on Yiazmat--I read some FAQs on how to beat him, and an 8 hour battle is just nuts. He's the only Mark I never took down. Maybe one of these days when I have a lot of time to kill . . .

Grinding can get on the nerves, but it's more-or-less a part of the genre--nixing it would kind of be like having a FPS where you don't shoot things. The worst grinding game ever is the original Dragon Warrior, in my opinion.

[TheeXile]

MmM said:

I have to admit I gave up on Yiazmat--I read some FAQs on how to beat him, and an 8 hour battle is just nuts. He's the only Mark I never took down. Maybe one of these days when I have a lot of time to kill . . .

My friend tried to go at him through an endurance run, but ended up failing after running out of some kind of item he was relying on.

My strategy was similar to the posted ones where I just keep 3 guys with Reverse + Decoy gambits and the other three with constant berserk and high-chaining melee weapons. It took a while to figure out how to get the strategy to work, though, but once you do it only takes an hour (only :P) to kill him. My trick was to measure party health not in HP but in characters left alive with Reverse and Decoy status in effect, and paying attention not to the action but only to the task of switching to whichever character(s) were left alive with said status.

Tedious as fuck, still.

Grinding can get on the nerves, but it's more-or-less a part of the genre--nixing it would kind of be like having a FPS where you don't shoot things. The worst grinding game ever is the original Dragon Warrior, in my opinion.

Heh. DQ8's grinding was unbearable for me. I don't think I would have completed that game without my friend's help.

I don't even want to imagine how bad the prequels were (Dragon Warrior was one, right?). Only thing that even got me through FFXII was my affinity for monkeying around with the gambit system, for example.




They should make a law to require all RPGs to have gambit systems. :P

[Vader]

Great work on those figures!
I especially like the Chocobot, although I'm not familliar with the game it's coming from.

[Coopersville]

Dragon Quest VIII has too much grinding? Overuse of grinding in RPG's is a deal breaker for me, and I've found DQ8 uses a medium amount, at most. Being able to provoke encounters without having to move really speeds things along, and I keep myself at a pretty high level, so that most encounters are finished after two or three rounds.

I'm about fourteen hours into it. Right now, I'm at the part where you have to retrieve something for Red to get your horse back. Do I have a huge grindfest to look forward to in higher levels? :(

[MmM]

TheeXile: One hour? Man, I must have been looking at the wrong FAQ--that author said a speed run for Yiazmat was 8 hours. I did the decoy/reverse thing with Omega Weapon, but never thought to try it on Yiazmat. I'll have to give that a try one of these days.

Coopersville: I also enjoyed DQ8 [best of the DQ games in my opinion, (doubtlessly the voice acting and fully-polygonal graphics are contributing factors to that assessment) although I never finished 4-6]--I didn't find it to be too much grinding. I won't spoil anything for you, since you're currently playing it, but there are some optional, tough, sub-quest things, later in the game, that you'll probably want to build up your characters for if you decide to tackle them.

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Here's another one, Mammon from Final Fantasy IV.



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[TheeXile]

Nice.



DQ8 isn't utterly horrible grind-wise, but I just don't have the patience for that kind of grinding anymore, personally. Macro systems (like FFXII's gambits) have left me too spoiled.


Edit: Also (skip to 12:30 to see it in action):

[Shanoa]

Oh boy the Cactus of FFXII, i don't know how often i've killed these.

Launch Octopus and Mammon are pretty well designed, as well as the Chocobot. Great job again. :D

[Dreadopp]

Nice Mammon. :) I remember those guys from FF4 and they were pretty tough.

[MmM]

TheeXile: Well, seeing is believing--I'll have to give that a try one of these days so I can finally have all those Marks done and complete my bestiary.


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Here's another one I finished yesterday, Chuck D. Head from Decap Attack:



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[Shapeless]

Oh damn!, you added more stuff. the Robo chicken reminds me of the pinky demon from Doom 3 with the robo legs, the mummy character looks cool but my Favorite of the bunch would be the tree monster. It reminds me a bit of the aliens from The Simpsons in some of the shots.

[MmM]

Here's another one I finished yesterday, an Evil Clown from Dragon Quest/Warrior II:



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[MmM]

Nonstop sculpting madness continues, and there's even some DOOM this time!


The Forgotten One (PC/Xbox: Doom 3 Resurrection of Evil):



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Ouija Table/Poltergeist (Playstation: Castlevania Symphony of The Night):



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[exp(x)]

What's with the two holes on the lost soul's forehead?

[Dreadopp]

Wow, nice work as usual. I especially like the Forgotten One. :)

[MmM]

exp(x) said:

What's with the two holes on the lost soul's forehead?

Me not following my reference sketches properly. :P While the hole placement wasn't what it should have been (they should be smaller and right next to the interiors of the eye sockets, instead of up on the forehead), I kind of like the look, to me they're suggestive of some of the multi-eyed DOOM 3 monster redesigns (i.e, Imp, Cacodemon). Consider it artistic license, or maybe some Marine managed to drill the critter there twice with bullets. Those holes aren't game accurate, that's for sure.

[Shapeless]

that evil clown looks like a real toy! hope you don't loose the little flaming skull, he's soo small.

speaking of Doom 3 have you played thru it MmM.

[MmM]

Nope, still haven't played DOOM 3; on a related note, I recently bought Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Operation Resurrection (PS2) though, and am working through that. As I've said before, unless I get an Xbox, or a newer computer, no DOOM 3 for me.

It would be pretty easy to lose the Forgotten One, but I've got it up on a shelf, so it should be okay, so long as the cats don't get a hold of it . . .

[MmM]

Demon Candle (Super Famicom/PS2/Nintendo DS: Dragon Quest V):



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