I've always maintained that if you don't have an original character (OC) you're obsessed with when you start playing Final Fantasy 14, you'll definitely have one by the time you finish it.
Despite the fact that the Warrior of Light is a blank slate, the game somehow manages to give you a big narrative arc over its massive runtime. I love hearing how other players interpret those story beats, often coming to completely different conclusions about which moments were significant to their characters. It's a narrative act of sleight of hand I've not yet seen repeated.
So while someone making a 5ft statue of their OC might seem a touch over the top, if I had half the talent as Reddit user Incanit, I'd definitely consider immortalising my hyur in bronze.
It took me nearly 450hours through half a year to sculpt and cast, and now i am presenting you my FFXIV character's 150cm bronze statue - Warrior of Light Yoko Akatsuki from r/ffxiv
According to Incanit, this thing weighs 135kg (just shy of 300lbs), owing to a hollow construction. Sculpting isn't even their main line of work, as they write in a comment on the ensuing thread:
"Yes, this is a hobby, which started when I decided that I wanted my character's statue in my garden. With some time spent learning sculpture I fell in love with this as a good way to rest and free my head from my main work (I am software engineer and I love it). For now I want to keep doing sculpture for myself, not as work."
They also posted a full album of their creative process, which took nearly 450 hours. Icanit built their Warrior of Light with a mixture of clay, plaster and plasticine, then cast bronze into the moulds they'd made from those parts before assembling the whole thing together. What's more, it's actually a 1:1 replica (Icanit's character is a minimum height Au Ra, making her very tiny).
It's a tremendously detailed love letter to their character, and one that will stand the test of time. When kept in proper conditions bronze can last for hundreds of years—one of the oldest statues, The Charioteer of Delphi, dates back to 478 BC, and is still very well preserved despite being over 2,000 years old. As user foozledaa points out: "People are gonna be finding and studying this in 3023."
Ultimately, Icanit's killer work here is a sign of how much this game's story sticks with you, and I'm super impressed by their work. The many screenshots I've taken of my own FF14 boy won't last nearly as long, so maybe I should look into buying a forge.
