As we reported earlier in the week, over 100 gamers-cum-artists have taken part in an impressive collaborative project, creating a total of 200 pieces of art that tell the complete story of Square’s classic RPG, Final Fantasy VII.
We recently got chance to sit down with the project’s curator, Daniel Towns, to find out exactly what went into the massive undertaking.
Daniel, better known to members of the Final Fantasy fan community as Loony BoB, acquired the Eyes on Final Fantasy forum last year after serving as a long-time contributor to the site. FFVII: Moments was organised on the EoFF forum, in partnership with the DeviantArt community.
Ranya from Taiwan depicts Sephiroth before the moment that changed Final Fantasy forever…
Tara Jayne: So, why did you start this art project?
Daniel Towns: I wanted to do something special for Eyes on Final Fantasy’s [15th] birthday, and I also really enjoyed the last art project we put together (an Oscars-style award ceremony, with art of characters receiving awards, on the red carpet, drinking, etc).
TJ: Why did you choose Final Fantasy VII?
DT: Not only was FFVII the game responsible for encouraging Cid – the founder of EoFF – to start up the site and its community, but it is also the game I knew most artists were familiar with. I figured it was the one that would get me the most success.
TJ: How hard was it to bring this together?
DT: It started out with me thinking it was going to be a lot smaller than it ended up. I created a list of 180 moments thinking we would end up with about 100 done. I also aimed for about 60 artists. In the end, we got 213 pieces completed by 107 artists! There were a lot of moments where I thought we wouldn’t get all the additional pieces completed on time – some of the art you see was submitted just hours before the PDF and video were being compiled. Still, we managed. I had a few days booked off work before the project was to be revealed so I could get it done in time. I probably spent every spare second I had on this project over the final week or two.
Sophia Guan from New Zealand shows Nibelheim in flames.
TJ: Finally, do you have any plans for more projects like this in the future?
DT: A lot of artists from the project have been in touch with me suggesting we do another. A number of artists who were not involved in this project have expressed an interest in getting involved in any future projects, too. They were quite annoyed at missing out on this one! I think there will be more art projects like this, but how soon is anyone’s guess. I think I’ll need at least a couple of months to recover from this one before I start another!
TJ: You can view the collection as a PDF, or if you have a spare hour, you can watch the YouTube video, which also includes some of the beautiful music from the classic RPG.