Miniature Customization: Final Fantasy Black Mage

While I didn’t intend for this particular project to be my last major crafting endeavor of 2021, it’s apropos since it forced me to combine most of the tricks and materials that I’ve picked up along the way since I made my first custom figure back in July of this year. The goal was simple: turn a Dollar Tree Batman figurine into my own interpretation of a Black Mage from Final Fantasy and, seeing as there was room enough on his base, I would scratch build him a Moogle partner too.

This was my starting point and if it looks familiar, it’s the same Dollar Tree Batman that I used to make my custom Beheaded miniature in a similar video game-inspired project. Since they were only a buck, I bought two of them. I wish I would have purchased even more since in recent months, these Justice League figurines have practically disappeared from every Dollar Tree in and around my area. That’s a real shame, but on the other hand, it’s not like I don’t already have an entire giant plastic bin that filled to the brim with cheap toys and miniatures that I’ve been collecting as custom fodder.

Per my usual standard operating procedure, I prepped the figure by sanding it down, scrubbing it with warm water and dish soap, and dremeled off all the visual cues that would point back to the figurine’s origins as Batman. Come to think of it, he kind of looks like Midnighter here if you squint hard enough.

The first thing I wanted to tackle in the building stage was the Black Mage’s iconic hat, which I sculpted entirely out of Green Stuff.  I decided to just go for and free-hand sculpt the brim first, kneading it into a disc shape around his head and using the excess to make a cone-like shape in the center of the head where I stuck a length of armature wire that would form the backbone for the rest of the hat. I allowed the Green Stuff to fully harden before I bent the wire back into the shape I wanted and sculpted around it. I carved out a band around the hat using my metal sculpting tools (which I’ve only just recently learned are commonly called “wax carvers”, yeah I’m still pretty new to all of this).

Taking a break from the Black Mage, I started scratch-building his Moogle out of plastic beads. I went with a Moogle for this project largely because of their simplistic design and the relative ease with which I thought I’d be able to make one. Sure enough, I glued a smaller round bead on to of a larger one, then stuck a length of wire on top using E6000, and stuck a tiny bead on top of that to create the Moogle’s little pom-pom antenna…thing. For his wings, I cut them off a plastic Halloween bat ring and affix them to its back, again using E6000 (which seemed to react better to that type of plastic than the superglue I'd been using).

Bouncing back and forth between the two, I made the Black Mage’s staff next after cutting off and re-posing the left arm. I should note here that the original figure’s hands were sculpted to his legs and when I cut them free, he had only half of each hand. But I would address this later.

The shaft was easy enough, I just cut two pieces of styrene rod from a pack I bought on Amazon last year and glued them to either side of his hand to give the impression that he was holding it. It was easier than taking my pin vise and drilling a hole through his hand, though it was something I’d considered. I’d crafted the head of the staff separately, first using a pair of needle-nose pliers to carefully create a spiral shape out of armature wire and then covered it with Green Stuff. Once it cured, I glued it to the top of his staff. Much later in the process, I would cut off a chunk of spare model sprue and glue it to the bottom of his staff to add a bit of extra detail/shape to the staff’s profile.

Around that time, I also sculpted some features onto the Moogle. Working in layers, I believe I made his fur/cheek floof and ears first, then sculpted his arms and little nub feet later on. I can’t recall whether or not I used another plastic bead for his nose or if I just made rolled up a little Green Stuff into a ball, but either way, I was pleased with how well I thought it turned out. I tried to carve out some recesses for the eyes before ultimately decided that it would be easier on me to just draw them on using Prismacolor markers (and it was).

Using worbla, I made the basic shape of the Mage’s collar (which I would later bulk out more with additional worbla scraps), boot cuffs, and belt buckle. I gave him some baggy pants, again using Green Stuff (I believe I had run out of Milliput at this point and more hadn’t yet arrived in the mail). It was here that I thought it might be prudent to jump the gun a little and start painting in his eyes, as well as paint the underside of the hat with some flat black Vallejo brush-on primer. For his eyes, I used a 50/50 mix of Citadel Yriel Yellow and Reaper Candlelight Yellow. I figured that the more I built on this figure, the harder the face would be to reach but that ended up not being too much of an issue.

And speaking of issues, I return briefly to the subject of the figure’s hands. I figured I could get away with the right hand being fleshed out with a glob of Green Stuff since the plan was to cover most of it with the cuff on his eventual coat/cloak but I knew then that I couldn’t get away with it on the hand that held the stuff.

Luckily, I could still remove the staff from his hand at this point so that I could carry out an emergency hand transplant. Using the hand from a spare BvS Mighty Mini Superman arm (leftover from my Bootleg Trapjaw build), I swapped it out with the original hand and re-glued the staff pieces. See, that’s a lot better and doesn't make him look like he's wearing half an oven mitt.

I’d finally reached the end of the build stage, which meant I’d have to tackle the Black Mage’s signature cloak. Like with his hat, I used Vivi from Final Fantasy IX as my main visual reference here and set about sketching rough shapes onto engineering paper, cutting them out, and test-fitting it onto the figure before tracing them onto my worbla sheet. What I would eventually do is just make his cloak in five separate pieces: the front half on the left, the front half on the right, the entire back piece, and both of his sleeves.

I would have to continually reheating the worbla and pressing my sculpting tools against the seam-lines between each of the main parts to mold them together, blending them in so that the cloak would look like it was all one cohesive piece. The cuffs, extra bulk to his collar, and the cross-stitching on the front would be layered next.

With the Black Mage’s outfit complete, I glued the Moogle onto the base since I didn’t have to worry about it potentially getting in the way anymore. Also, I gave it a coat of Vallejo brush-on gray primer just to see how it would look before I officially started prepping the piece for painting.

I primed the entire thing with Bulldog adhesive promoter and began laying down the basecoat. I wanted to give the mage striped pants (again, taking yet another cue from Vivi Ornitier) and took the opportunity to try out some Tamiya masking tape I’d purchased. While I originally bought the roll of Tamiya masking tape to use with a metal digital camo cutting pattern I found on ebay (that I’m still not entirely sure how to use as of this writing), I knew I would need something specifically made for model/hobby painting unlike the dollar store painter’s tape I’d used on and off in previous projects.

That was a good call on my part, since the Tamiya masking tape left no residue when I removed it nor did it tear up the first layer of paint. It’s great stuff. As far as what I did, I painted the pants with a layer of Citadel Mechanicus Standard Gray, waited for it to fully dry, cut a length of the Tamiya masking tape into strips, laid them over the figure, and then painted on the lighter coat consisting of Reaper Desert Sand with a touch of Reaper Mountain Stone gray. I would also use the masking tape to help paint some dark brown outlines around his cuffs.

The Moogle’s off-white color was another new process for me as I’d never mixed an off-white before. Going off of a youtube video, I poured onto my wet pallet a little Reaper Dragon Blue, a little Vallejo White, and some orange that I mixed using Citadel Mephiston Red and Reaper Candlelight Yellow (it took quite a few drops ). I loaded up the brush with some blue, mixed it into the white, and then mixed in some of the orange before adding a few more drops of white. It was here that I would also draw on the Moogle’s eyes using a fine-tipped Prismacolor illustration marker.

Here’s the complete list of paints I used for the basecoat and I must apologize again for not recording the actual amounts I used in mixing them (again, it was a trial and error process to get the colors just right):

• Hat: Reaper Candlelight Yellow and either Vallejo Old Wood or Flat Earth. Reaper Harvest Brown (hat band).
• Gloves, Boots, Cross-Stitching: Reaper Harvest Brown and Vallejo Chocolate Brown
• Pants: Citadel Mechanicus Standard Gray (first layer), Reaper Desert Sand and Mountain Gray (second layer)
• Cloak Cuffs: Reaper Dragon White and Desert Sand, Citadel Dryad Bark (cuff outlines)
• Belt Buckle and Cross Stitch ends: Citadel Runelord Brass
• Eyes: Citadel Yriel Yellow and Reaper Candlelight Yellow
• Staff: Alternating layers of Reaper Harvest Brown, Vallejo Old Wood, and Vallejo Flat Earth
• Cloak: Citadel Macragge Blue
• Undershirt/area between cloak: Macragge Blue and Citadel Abbadon Black
• Moogle fur/base color: Off-white mix of Vallejo White, Dragon Blue, Mephiston Red, and Candlelight Yellow
• Moogle Wings, minor details: Abbadon Black
• Moogle antenna/ball thing: Mephiston Red
• Moogle Nose: Vallejo White with a touch of Mephiston Red
• Base: Alternating layers of Mountain Stone and Citadel Zamesi Desert with added Citadel Krieg Khaki dry-brushing

I knew there wasn’t a ton of detail on this model that would lend itself to a lot of shading and dry-brushing (i.e. a lot of recesses, areas for the wash to flow into), but I still gave it a careful all-over wash with Citadel Nuln as well as some Agrax Earthshade on the brown areas. If nothing else, it would give his staff and wide flat areas like his hat a more weathered look that would add more visual interest to the overall piece.

For the final painting stage, I dry brushed the high points on his cloak with Dragon Blue. Being a touch lighter than his Macragge Blue base color, my hope was that the Dragon Blue would add some highlights and add a bit more dimension to his cloak. I left the main color of his hat alone, again preferring the weathered look that came from the wash, and dry brushed the base color over the Harvest Brown band to contrast with the dark recesses. I did the same with staff, again dry brushing on different shades of brown/earth tones.

For the Moogle, I dry brushed it with the off-white mix that was still on my wet palette and traced back over the eyes with the Prismacolor marker. After a few more touch-ups here and there, I was finally ready to call it a day on the painting stage. You can see the final shots below, taken after a matte finish protective clearcoat to seal everything in.

It wasn’t until I started this write-up did I realize just how involved this whole project was. Despite that, I never really felt like I struggled that much with this one and overall, I’m really happy with how the final product turned out. So much so that upon finish, I immediately began planning out another Final Fantasy build, this time with a Red Mage and a tiny gold Chocobo. But until then, I leave you with the before and after shot: