Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Crash Bandicoot - Origin of Papu Papu

Another special feature for the Crash fans who frequent my blog. I don't know if you've seen these sketches before. I'm not sure if Naughty Dog ever published them. I don't think they did. My feeling is this is the first time that development art for the character of Papu Papu has been shown. There are more drawings but these images are the core of the concept development work from March 1995. Hope you enjoy them.







20 comments:

tengg said...

I have never seen this arts before. First pic is awesome but of course the fat version of him is more comedic and racy

Unknown said...

Thanks Charles for posting these! The only one Naughty Dog ever released to the public was this:
http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n620/NYankeesFan95/papusketch.gif

Anonymous said...

The first could be used in a new game or a possible cartoon as the leader of another tribe in war with Papu.

Charles Z said...

Those additional designs would've made good characters too guys. That image you linked to Pat was a cleanup line drawing showing Papu Papu in action after the decision was made as to what he would look like. As with most everything else dealing with the Crash Bandicoot project Naughty Dog released only a very limited amount of development art.

Anonymous said...

However you worked in Crash Nitro Kart too right? Do you have some Concept arts of the characters or karts for that game?

Charles Z said...

Yes I did a lot of design work on Crash Nitro Kart. There's a huge amount of development art from Crash Nitro Kart. So much art that a book could be published from it all. We developed the project through my school. There was a team of very talented people working on it including Joe Pearson who was on the original Crash / Willy the Wombat team.

Unknown said...

Hey Charles, did you work on Crash Team Racing because I find your art and Bob Rafei art very similar in style and design. Also, did you ever consider publishing an art book of all the Crash art you did?

Charles Z said...

I didn't work on Crash Team Racing. I was on Crash 1, 2 and 3 and then a few years later on Crash Nitro Kart. Bob Rafei was a student of mine. He enrolled at my school to study under me twice. So did the entire development team at Naughty Dog and also the entire development team at Insomniac Games. I first met Bob when he was hired at Naughty Dog in 1995. We were already developing Crash/Willy at that time. He was a Photoshop artist back then. As far as coming out with a book, I've already published one that features art I created as class demonstrations. I plan on publishing more. There's a large backlog plus I have my own original projects in different stages of development.

Anonymous said...

So you didn't designed Nitros Oxide, the green alien that appears in CTR and CNK? Wow I thought you worked on CTR too. Were you working on Jak and Daxter at that time?
However CNK is the first game in the series that make some changes in Charactera designs, like Crash without his pink mouth or Coco being very different and Cortex With red boots and gloves. Did you made this changes or the 3D artist?

Charles Z said...

I didn't design Nitrous Oxide. I don't know who did. Probably Bob Rafei after he took my classes. Crash in 1995, Crash 2 in 1997 and also Spyro the Dragon, Crash 3 in 1998, Jak and Daxter during the whole year of 2000, Crash Nitro Kart in 2002. CNK was produced by Vicarious Visions in Albany, New York. That's who Universal went with at that time. With CNK it was going to be the last Crash game. They came my way hoping to give the franchise a new shot up. Otherwise it was going to be the last one. CNK kept Crash going for a few more years. I also developed a project for Radical in 2001 that never came out. I have a lot of artwork from that too.

Unknown said...

Wow, I can't believe that CNK was gonna be the end of the road for Crash. Thank goodness he's still popular among fans alike.

Charles Z said...

I'm surprised at how popular Crash is. There's a large amount of work that fans haven't seen yet. I'll keep bringing it out for you. I'd also like to do new Crash art.

Anonymous said...

Maybe CNK was going to be the last one because TWOC didn't do very well.
However I would like to see some characters and kart deisgn. Plus how did you managed to draw the tracks? I think it's difficult to draw an entire track with climbs and descents and other things.

Charles Z said...

Universal was unhappy with how TWOC did. CNK would've been the end of the line if it followed the same path. There were three great artists working on the backbround designs, environments and race tracks of CNK. Joe Pearson who developed the look of the original Crash game. He designed every single background for Crash 1. Then there was John Nevarez who was here at my school as a teacher at that time. He started out as a student. Today John is at Pixar. He was the main designer of the karts too. There was also Alan Simmons who was famous for working on the Batman and Superman cartoons at Warner Bros. We developed the race tracks by establishing a theme for each track, then drawing multiple views of the track from the starting line to the finish line as if you were driving through it, based on an overhead map of the track.

Unknown said...

Based on what we heard from Travellers Tales, we can agree that it was Universal's fault for WOC. Mark Cerny was going to develop a Sony exclusive Crash game until Universal fell out with Mark and Sony and Uni then hired TT to develop WOC in only 12 months. If Universal was patient enough to give them more time and tried something new, it would've been a lot better.

Anonymous said...

So what do you think about Nitros Oxide? Why don't you do some drawings of how you would have designed him? It would be funny and interesting.

Charles Z said...

Initially I thought the design of the character wasn't compatible with the general look of the Crash project. But he's an alien so I guess there can be some flexibility. I designed a lot of alien characters for CNK. I could have fun coming up with different concepts for N Oxide. Personally I prefer doing new things as opposed to reworking established characters. We'll see.

Anonymous said...

Interesting I hope to see your vision of Nitros Oxide, because in my opinion he waqs in style ewith the other characters more than other characters like Nina Cortex or the Mutants from Crash of the Titans and Mind Over Mutant.
However I noticed that you put some characteristic on the characters that rappresents the species. Like the pink mouth that all the bandicoot characters have, or the similar shoes. Also the 4 bandicoot girls that appear in CTR have this particularities.

Charles Z said...

Sometimes those details come along later after the basic form of the character is established. The thing about the designs in Crash is that you have some characters that are fairly traditional in their look and others that break the mold and are genuinely unique. Naughty Dog would go back and forth depending on the feedback they were getting from Sony Japan and also from what they wanted to do. Sometimes they played it safe and other times they were trying to be different.

Anonymous said...

So thats why the aliens that you desgined for Crash Nitro Kart looks so different from the other characters?