Vivi Ornitier's Enchanted Fantasy Night — Print & Oil Painting

A magenta moon fills the top third of the picture, mottled and enormous, and everything below is lit by it. The reeds in the foreground go black, the water under the bridge turns pink and teal in alternating bands, and the stonework takes a violet edge on every surface facing upward.

Sitting on that bridge with his knees drawn up is Vivi Ornitier, painted almost entirely as a shape: a wide pointed hat flopping forward over a face made of pure shadow, a pale blue coat several sizes too large, and two yellow eyes burning under the brim. Those eyes are the only warm colour in the lower half of the canvas.

The black mages of Final Fantasy IX are manufactured beings with very short lives, and Vivi spends his story working out what that means for him. A small figure sitting alone at night with his hands folded is about as economical a statement of it as an image can manage.

Technically the piece is built from flat shapes with hard edges, closer to cut paper than to modelled painting, with soft glows reserved for the moon and for the sparks drifting through the reeds. A bush of broad green leaves sits against his shoulder on the right.

Listed in our Final Fantasy collection. For another Final Fantasy figure defined entirely by costume and colour rather than by a face, see the harlequin in motley.