VIVI0 VIVI1 VIVI2 VIVI3 VIVI4
VIVI5 VIVI6 VIVI7 VIVI8 VIVI9
VIVI10 VIVI11 VIVI12 VIVI13 VIVI14
top

iAbout

 
about

One fine afternoon at work, after listening for the past several days — and hours on end — to the soundtrack for Final Fantasy VIII, I decided it was high time to make a playlist change. I wasn't in the mood for vocals, and the thought of listening to the classics whilst programming seemed to me to be more like a waste of potential inspiration. That's when I remembered that long, long ago I'd transfered the Final Fantasy IX soundtrack to my mp3 player, and that it had been hiding in wait at the bottom of my list for me to eventually find.

When I'd first played Final Fantasy IX, it didn't have the effect on me that it'd had on long-time Final Fantasy connoisseurs. I'd only played a handful of games in the series — and though a handful might seem like more than a few, it really wasn't a lot, given the number of Final Fantasy games there are — and so mostly all of the wonderful shout-outs and references and allusions swept right over my head.

Although I enjoyed the story and quite liked the cast of characters, the only one that really stood out to me was Vivi. Vivi's the type of character that sweetly but surely grabs for the audience's sympathy, and gets it. He's the character that you just can't dislike. He's the underdog, unrightly so, and you find yourself rooting for him and hoping things will finally work out for him at some point. And when it all comes together, you genuinely feel happy for him.

When I put on the Final Fantasy IX soundtrack, I was brought back into my memories of the story, found myself envisioning the Tantalus theatre floating across the Mist and Garnet's grand escape from Alexandria, the Iifa emerging from the Mist and the Black Mages swarming the skies in a tornado of black feathers. I was quite surprised at the nostalgia the music invoked in me.

But I guess I shouldn't have been, since Final Fantasy IX is all about reminiscing: the story, the characters, the mood and themes were all inspired by the previous games, particularly the more classical, fantasy-like ones in the series. Even the game's theme song, "Melodies of Life", speaks of memories and remembering the past.

Nostalgia, of all human conditions, is one of the most inspiring for me. Once I started thinking about the game, and in particular Vivi, a whole lot of ideas built up in my head. I thought it'd be best to get them out. And so, with nostalgia as my motivator, I began working on this dedication to the little black mage of Final Fantasy IX.

Name

It didn't take me long to come up with a name for my tribute to Vivi. As a symbol, Vivi's character clearly represented the concept of magic, in all of its forms as seen throughout the series. Calling this site Archimage seemed only natural.

Layout

Most of the well-known images of Vivi featured a more meeker, unsure version of himself. I wanted something a little different, something that showed who he became, not who he started out as. An image of Vivi wielding his magical staff with confidence popped into my head, and I set to drawing it (see the image above for the resulting sketch). After I was finished, I scanned the sketch and created a vector overlay for it, and then incorporated the final piece into the current layout.

Header Excerpts

All lines are from Thomas Edward Brown's poem "Opifex".

layout_bot