Here's a publishing first. I've dug up the development sketches for Crash Nitro Kart. This was the ninth game in the series I believe. It was published in 2003. I worked on it the year before in 2002. Almost all of the design development was done through my school as I organized a crew for this when I was contacted by Vicarious Visions out of Albany, New York. They produced the game.
My first assignment was to nail the lead bad guy. His name was Emperor Velo who was in control of an alien planet. I did a lot of design work for the character and the game. Most of it has never been seen before. I'll be including it among the extensive archive of art that I'll be getting out to the public. This is the first installment of Emperor Velo's development art. It began with this sketch.
When I create concept designs that will be modeled in a computer I sometimes include a sketch of the character from the side so the studio artists can get an idea as to what it will look like in profile. This drawing was included in my initial impression of Velo.
3 comments:
Wow! I'm surprised that Velo changed a lot through design just to find the perfect one. Not to mention all the other alien creatures you had to design too.
Also, CNK and Twinsanity are probably the only Crash games with some Naughty Dog touches in them (i.e. Environments, Characters, etc...)
Were the Crash characters needed to be redesigned too in order to fit with the environment around them?
A lot of the designs in Twinsanity aren't that good. Especially Crash and Cortex, they are not simple as Charles designed them for the first game.
Charles do you like redesigns of your characters.
I did a lot of design exploration with Velo.
There was disatisfaction with the Crash games at this point. CNK was meant to revive the franchise. There was some reworking of the characters but not much. Mostly in designing Cortex as an ape. A large amount of visual development on Nitro Kart.
Redesigning the characters over time is an inevitability for any series that runs as long as Crash. Especially when it goes through different artists at different studios. Everyone has their opinions. People want to try new things. I don't mind if other artists rework a character. I like to see how other people interpret things. Problems come from poor art direction and executives meddling too much in the process.
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