2cphoenix.bsky.social

Enemy gauntlets, obscure achievements, and everyone’s traumatizing favorites: superbosses. The final stretch before the finale wound up stretching to nearly 3 hours. youtu.be/88hDMgyMdF0?...

Presented without further comment

“He did it… He broke down Kingdom Hearts” youtu.be/4OEsXpxqCPc?...

I absolutely love this but I’ll also take this opportunity to explain that I didn’t JUST do this to be funny. When writing I get VERY self-conscious of repeating myself, and I usually combat this using synonyms, but with proper names… well I had to figure something out

Day 39: Unknown This one's by a different artist, @cabletown.bsky.social to really drive home how he just... doesn't belong in the world of KH1. The art is absolutely stunning, and only gets cooler the longer you look at it. I especially like the detail of which symbol is covered by his hand...

Day 38: Sephiroth Nothing I can say will add to how badass this mural turned out.

So this is how 2026 is gonna be, huh?

Day 37: Ice Titan Anyone else just... never get anywhere close to beating this guy until well into adulthood? Kinda crazy how inapplicable nearly every combat skill in the game is, but I'll give him this, he is certainly memorable.

Day 36: Kurt Zisa A Fan-Favorite and for good reason. Icarus did lament to me that his design, especially with the placement of his shoulders, was especially difficult to draw, but as always, it came out looking absolutely wonderful.

Day 35: Phantom Crazy how Sora fights at least 4 unique Grim Reaper stand-ins that I can think of across the series, but Phantom did it first, and honestly, best.

Day 34: Rock Titan A silly boss to be sure, but no less deserving of the mural treatment than some already covered. I always liked fighting him as a kid, I wasn't really conscious of what bosses were and weren't hard, so I thought I was a badass beating something so big on my first try.

Day 33: Hades I had an idea way too late in the process to commission an additional orange "angry" mural of this guy so I could switch between them during his boss bio, but even without that, this is one hell of a mural. A favorite villain of mine, shame his voice actor is such a tool.

Day 32: Behemoth WOW this one is purple. Consider it a defiant scream in the face of all the recolors in Final Mix, justice for the purple heartless!

Got to meet my childhood incarnate this weekend, @chuggaaconroy.bsky.social A huge thanks for inspiring myself and countless others onto the road of video-creation, it’s been a blast!

Day 31: Ansem Riku This one actually turned out a LITTLE busy for my liking, but there were a lot of iconic aspects I wanted captured, and the Ansem Silhouette really hits all the right notes.

Day 30: Maleficent It's not fair, there's really no contest, but this is my favorite by a long shot. The rising fire effect was directly inspired by one used by Disney's imagineers in rides like Haunted Mansion. The flames are drawn on a larger circle, which is rotated behind the mural.

Day 29: Maleficent Running out ways to praise Icarus for how much he SLAYS the Disney baddies. His quality is insane, seeing what he cooked up for each mural very quickly became one of my favorite parts of each video.

Day 27: Hercules Honey you mean Hunkules. One of the worst bosses, but one of the best murals. Love the 12 labors represented in the outer circles, and of course, the real MVP of the fight, the barrels.

Day 26: Captain Hook Never would have anticipated it'd be the case, but this is probably my second favorite mural of them all, the colors, the composition, Hook should not be allowed to look this good.

Day 25: AntiSora Had a ton of fun with this one, fans of the series will recognize it as being based off of Sora's official mural, with a few obvious differences. My personal favorite is the use of the Dark Coastline as the background.

Day 24: Oogie's Manor I gave Icarus almost no direction this one, though I did request the moon and purple globs. As such, he based the pose entirely off a scene from the game. This actually worked SUPER well, cuz I got to do a cool transition with it, which really made this piece stand out.

Day 23: Oogie Boogie Doing the best he can, I feel like this mural is probably the closest Icarus and I got to what Square would actually make if they made these murals themselves. Oogie as so much iconography to play off of, and this mural is a gift that keeps on giving. I can't believe my eyes.

Day 22: Lock, Shock and Barrel This fight could have done SO much more, but at the same time, I'm almost glad it didn't. Genuinely Sora's biggest weakness in KH1 is dealing with multiple threats at once, so these three probably had to be as simple as they were.

Day 21: Giant Ursula The first properly difficult fight in the game, I asked Icarus to really make her feel big and imposing, and man did he ever. Something silly I just realized about this fight, Ursula's crown comes out of absolutely nowhere and is never addressed.

Day 20: Ursula Do I even need to say it at this point, give Icarus a Disney Villain and he will simply COOK. I haven't ranked these or anything, but if I did, this would be a shoe-in for top 5.

Day 19: Glut Technically in all the official game stuff his name is just Shark, but c'mon, this is Glut and we all know it. Once again, I love the murals with bright white on them, as they really pop when I add the VFX, and Glut's pearly whites made this otherwise forgettable boss stand out.

Day 18: Yuffie Absolutely love this one. The idea being that if Cloud's mural is surrounded in Materia, Yuffie would naturally get TONS of Materia. All the colors really made this one stand out in my memor, and looked especially dazzling while glowing.

Day 17: Parasite Cage Not too much to say on this one, though this was the point where Icarus began to complain that a lot of what I was asking him to draw was really ugly. Can't really argue with this one.

Day 16: Genie Jafar Being bad never looked this good. Yeah it's no one's favorite boss, but he has style, and he has Gilbert Gottfried

Day 15: Jafar Another major Disney baddy, another PEAK design. Each of the circles on the border represents one of the spells he casts either in the game or in the movie, and I especially love the touch of some of them actively being cast by Jafar. This is simply one of the best.

Day 14: Cave of Wonders It's a good thing all these murals were drawn before I covered the bosses in a video, because with how much I learned to hate this boss, I might have requested it not receive such nice art.

Day 13: Pot Centipede I think this guy's a pretty underrated boss, he's basically doing the Demon Tide thing like 15 years early, and the Pot Spiders have just enough tricks up their sleeves to be threatening in a crowd without overwhelming you.

Day 12: Opposite Armor Is it just me or is this art REALLY cute? I told Icarus as much when he finished it, and he called me crazy, but I don't think I am...

Day 11: Stealth Sneak This mural went through a lot of iterations behind the scenes. I showed it to some friends and asked if they could tell what it was, and they all said we should make him more visible. I ended up sticking to my guns though, and he wound up the most popular mural among viewers!

Day 10: Not Clayton Once again the major Disney Baddies got INSANE preferential treatment from the artist, but good god did he COOK with Clayton. I wish I could take credit for the idea of making the surrounding circles sniper reticles, but that's all Icarus.

Day 9: Sabor Icarus did not have to go this hard on a boss fight that's over in 15 seconds but he did and I love him for it. In my video series, I apply glow and light ray effects to these, and I especially love the way they interacted with his/her belly fur.

Day 8: Cerberus OH he's such a good boy. I'm not a dog person but I've always loved every depiction of Cerberus, even those as vicious as this one. Check out the green spirits on the border, you'll find a few of the easter eggs that were also in the River of the Dead in Disney's Hercules!

Day 7 (how appropriate): Cloud Full disclosure, I've played VERY little Final Fantasy 7, but Cloud's role in KH1 left me feeling like I'd just met the coolest kid in school, and he deserves what is definitely one of the coolest murals.

Day 6: Trickmaster I think this was the first one that really caught people's attention in my series, and it's not hard to guess why. The whacky perspective compliments his bizarre design SO well.

Day 5: Queen of Hearts Icarus is an even bigger Disney Fan than me, and hands down his best work was always on the Disney Villains. This is easily in my personal top 5 Murals for this project, the colors, the painted roses, the expression. Chefs kiss.

Day 4: Guard Armor Always loved this design. I feel like this art goes pretty hard, especially with the perspective on the claws. Hey, question: do you suppose the hands and feet are their own Heartless, and if so, pureblood or emblem?

Day 3: (Squall) Leon(hart) Here we got to begin experimenting with incorporating source material into the murals, though admittedly, neither I nor Icarus has much experience with FF8. Still, you can see we pulled his outfit and Rinoa directly from that game!

Day 2: Riku! This one almost didn't happen, since his initial fight on Destiny Islands isn't STRICTLY a boss fight, but given the parallels to the late-game fights that ARE, I decided last minute that this one deserved the same gravitas, and I'm extremely glad I did!

My KH1 Deep Dive is nearing completion, so every day, I'm gonna post one of the incredible art pieces I commissioned from a friend of mine. He doesn't have an active online presence, but a huge thanks to Icarus_.art for making this dream of mine a reality. Starting with Darkside, and looking AMAZING

Gonna start posting my YouTube videos on here like I'm some kind of professional and see how I feel about it. Here's a 77 minute breakdown of Hollow Bastion hot off the render button for your perusing pleasure www.youtube.com/watch?v=S80o...

Forget separating the art from the artist, I say steal it. If you gave something great to the world, I’m sorry, we’re not giving it back until you walk back your bullshit. Disney’s Hades and Harry Potter belong to the LGBTQIA+ folks who grew up with them and I’m tired of pretending they don’t.