(Originally published Summer 2021)
Tell us a bit about yourself!
Meriadoc: My name is Meriadoc and I’m a wool sculptor specializing in needle felting. I find inspiration in all things heartfelt and wholesome, along with some sassy characters thrown in too.
I’ve been needle felting for over a year now but have been sewing and working with textiles as a personal hobby for over 15 years. Nothing too major or noteworthy but just something I would pick up every now and then!
I always wanted to learn sculpting but traditional sculpting seemed very… intimidating, so I was drawn more to folk-style of working with textiles and stumbled on needle felting. I loved the ability to be able to create something from just time and creativity and as a bonus, had a really low space requirement.
How did you first discover Final Fantasy XIV?
Meriadoc: My husband and I were looking for a game to play together and we’ve always been huge fans of the Final Fantasy series. Once we heard about FFXIV being re-released as A Realm Reborn and it was available on PS3 and PC, we were hooked. We’ve been playing on and off together since about 2015.
We both have very different play styles, but FFXIV was one of those games that really incorporated things that we both like so seamlessly. We really like that we can meet up, do a few dungeon crawls together and then we can go run off and pick something else up.
You’ve become fairly prolific in the FFXIV community with your felt sculpts. Is your approach to starting a new sculpture mostly the same from project to project, or does it depend on the design of the character you’re sculpting?
Thank you so much! I kind of have a set routine when I sculpt the fundamentals, like the core body and legs, but after that my process has really evolved over time.
Back a few months ago, I was connecting all of my core wool together before starting color, now I finish the color and details on the legs entirely before attaching. I’m all about A/B testing when it comes to sculpting and finding ways that I not only enjoy but what makes sculpting way more fun and easy to manage.
I’ve found that if I look at a character design as I would a costume or a real life garment, it helps me to not double-work myself when it comes to color and details. Managing my sculpt via working in layers is one of my main techniques where the sculpt may not make a whole lot of sense when someone else looks at it, but in a few more detail layers it begins to come together.
In the past few months, I’ve also really been enjoying using felt fabric sheets for a lot of clothing details to make them more dynamic and more “life-like.” Collars, pant legs, scarfs, sleeve details, etc.—all of these really work well with a little help from felt sheets and really makes a big statement on the piece.
Given the size of each sculpture, and the materials you’re working with, I imagine you have to be pretty discerning about what to include and disregard from a design. How do you determine what details and shapes to portray in a felt sculpture?
Meriadoc: Very much so! Each sculpt is around 4.0 to 4.5 inches tall and trying to fit everything in would lead to a lot of frustration.
But this is one of my favorite parts of the process. I really like to study as many reference photos as I can of the character, not only just to kind of get “the feel” of the design but also to plan out my sculpting strategy.
Most of the time, it’s easy to kind of cherry pick what to include or what you can scale down to still make an impact. For example, if a character is wearing a vest with several decorative seams on the front, most of the time you can still make the same impact with just one or two lines to represent the seam.
The goal for each detail included is to make a similar impact that the original design did with less.
Another great trick I learned in a high school painting class a loooong time ago, is to squint at your reference image. If you’re having trouble or getting overwhelmed by a certain design, squinting at your reference image can get you the general idea of where to start.
I use this trick towards the end of the sculpt to determine if I need to add anything else too!
Have you ever designed a sculpt and then, while working on the actual felting, had to change your plans for the design on the fly? Or does the end sculpture usually always come out how you imagined it from the beginning?
Meriadoc: Most of the time, I have a pretty solid idea of how I’d like a sculpture to come out. I’m a pretty organized person and I love to have several reference images before I even start the basic core. BUT, with that being said, working with textiles is a very, very forgiving art form.
One time, when I was working on a sculpt, I was looking at the wrong glamour reference for a good while! It was definitely a big-oof moment, and something that really made me thankful for working with textiles.
In that moment, I found myself not in a huge pickle as I would be in other mediums. Anytime you make a color mistake or something just isn’t flowing with your work, you can always just felt over what you don’t like.
I’m a huge advocate for those who are looking for a creative outlet that is super low pressure to try needle felting just for that reason alone!
To give us an idea of your process, roughly how long does it take you from start to finish to complete a sculpt?
My basic sculpts usually take a minimum of 10 hours to complete from start to finish. So like my minions, my more casual characters, and so on usually clock in over 10 hours.
The more complicated sculpts usually take 20+ hours to complete from start to finish.
What has been a particularly difficult character you’ve sculpted so far? And one that you had a lot of fun creating?
Oooo, I would say that those titles are both synonymous! I really enjoy detail heavy sculpts and find the fun in the challenge of it all!
One of my most intimidating sculpts, I would have to say, is Yugiri in her Shadowbringers glam. I worked on her for a commission and I kept saying to myself “where does this swirl even go?” and “how am I going to do THAT?” for a lot of her details! But, I think she came out so beautiful and I’m really happy that she’s in her new home.
I’d love to try to work on her again at some point! I’m always up for a challenge and I find that the second round of working on a character is where I learn the most. I love looking back at my older sculpts and seeing how much I’ve grown in my ability and process.
What has your experience been like interacting with the FFXIV community since you’ve been creating lots of XIV sculpts?
The FFXIV community is truly wonderful and everyone who I’ve met has been nothing but supportive and nice!! It is one of those communities whose reputation doesn’t touch the actual niceness of the people within it.
And just like the game itself, the community has so many different niches that you can settle into too, which I love! There’s the amazingly talented screenshot community, (which I really like to be active in because I love to see all the character designs!) the writing community, the housing community, raiders, crafters/artists… the list just goes on.
I really love the diversity that FFXIV brings too, there’s so many people from all over who can all connect on multiple levels. Truly, there’s nothing like the FFXIV community out there.
What has your experience been like interacting with the FFXIV community since you’ve been creating lots of XIV sculpts?
It is SO much fun! I absolutely love to sit and chat and talk about FFXIV and needle felting, it really is the best of both worlds.
Streaming has been something I really wanted to try for a long time. I love talking to others in real life, so having an outlet where I can connect my art and my personality in real time has really helped me to build better connections with my community.
After getting rid of the initial stream-jitters, I really wanted to focus my time live with something that people could not only watch and relax to but maybe even try out for themselves and learn different techniques.
So, that’s how the stream series was born! Each Saturday for about 2 hours, I continue where I left off the week before on the same character so you can see the entire process in real time, and be able to ask questions in real time too.
Streaming with my stream series is VERY different from my normal workflow. It challenges me not only to be patient with the character but also use this time to be able to chat with others about the process or maybe even encourage them to try needle felting themselves!
It’s also come with an unexpected bonus where it allows me to study the piece longer and maybe even plan out a different process that works better than the one I would initially try!
What has your experience been like interacting with the FFXIV community since you’ve been creating lots of XIV sculpts?
For years, I would say how much I wanted to learn and how I’d really like to try needle felting and just never took any action. It wasn’t that I wasn’t interested, but it was definitely something that I just didn’t prioritize like I should have.
If there’s one thing I would say it would be: if you’re thinking about starting, just do it. Seriously.
I started with a little $20 kit from Amazon and just played around with it, making characters that I really liked. I went rogue without a lot of guidance or tutorials because I just wanted something that wasn’t super high-pressure, hyper-focused work.
For months, I worked on small scale projects every day because the entire process is just super enjoyable and a nice stress reliever that doesn’t need a designated area to work. It checked all of the boxes that I wanted out of a creative hobby and it’s turned into so much more than I could ever imagine.
Thank you so much for your time and insight into your work! You can find Meriadoc on Twitter, and support or commission her through her Kofi!
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