Friday, August 24, 2012

Crash Bandicoot's first girlfriend

This weekend will mark the three month anniversary of my blog and I haven't missed a day so far. To celebrate I thought I'd surprise the Crash fans with something very special that you probably didn't know existed. Here's the very first development sketches of the character who became Crash Bandicoot's girlfriend way back in the Willy the Wombat days.

That's right. Crash's very first original girlfriend concept doodles. This is the character that eventually became Karmen which eventually became Tawna.

I tried a few different approaches to see what Naughty Dog would bite at. From the girl next door to street walker to dimwitted floozy to plain jane. It went on from there. Hope you enjoy this never before seen artwork from the original creation of Crash Bandicoot in January 1995.








8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow really unespected from Tawna! I prefer the newest concept arts that were in the old Naughty Dog Site.

Unknown said...

That is unexpected!I could tell that's the design was from early development because it resembles these drawings/sketches of Willie:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7a/Willy_wombat.jpg

Still though, it's nice to see!

Charles Z said...

That's right Pat. The drawings at the link your posted are from the second phase of Crash / Willy the Wombat development. His girlfriend in these sketches are based upon what was happening with Crash/Willy at the time. It was raw concept stuff but helped to set a direction for Tawna. I thought this might surprise the hard core Crash fans.

Anonymous said...

Wow,I never would of thought of Tawna like that In the early days,thanks for posting.

Anonymous said...

That's really Interesting,do you have any more?

Charles Z said...

Hello MrTariqJohnson. There may be a sketch or two of her in this style that I haven't published mainly because the drawing is sub par, but I'm pretty sure this is about all there is with the initial design / thinking behind Crash's girlfriend. There's plenty more art I created from Crash that I'll be getting to at some point in the near future, including games 2 and 3 and also Nitro Kart.

- said...

Hahaha it just looks like Crash in a wig. Which kind of reminds me of this fanart that I saw the other day: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Coco-Dress-Up-595176399

Charles Z said...

Hi Fangurl Friday and thanks for the comments you left here and in the other posts. This was an odd character and it would've been interesting to see how she turned out if this was the direction we went in when Crash was being developed. Maybe she could've been used in some capacity. In any case at least she got exposure here. Fun stuff in the link you left.