Saturday, October 06, 2012

Jak and Daxter history - The Road to Jak - Part 10

As my design exploration on the lead character for 'Project Y' continued in 2000 I headed in a direction that would give him a flamboyant and distinctive design element in the form of a headdress or hair. I maintained an earthy native feel to the character and saw him as having something of a wild but strong and noble element to his personality.




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8 comments:

  1. Unknown1:12 PM

    Wow Charles! Those look great!

    They remind me of the designs of Ratchet & Clank!

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  2. Charles Z5:34 PM

    Thanks Pat. These drawings are more than 2 1/2 years before R&C was released.

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  3. Anonymous4:30 AM

    There is a very long road to reach the actual Jak look. This is very very good, it seems a World of Warcraft character in a more cartoony style

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  4. Charles Z12:05 AM

    I didn't know what was happening with World of Warcraft or much else at that time. When work on Project Y aka Jak and Daxter started I was specifically directed not to look at anything else or do any research into any other game or style of animation or anything along those lines. I worked in a vacuum with a purpose of coming up with a look for characters that had not been seen before. I did a huge amount of drawing on J&D with lots of development sketches. You're getting a glimpse into part of it with what was done for Jak.

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  5. Sinnamon Jam10:21 AM

    Hey, did you ever work on the Spyro games?
    I think I might have found a few concept drawings around the place that linked me to you.

    http://www.abalian.com/blog/files/Spyro%20concept%20rendition.png
    and this
    http://download.gamezone.com/uploads/image/data/1104377/news-spyroconcept2.jpg

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  6. Charles Z10:38 AM

    Yes, those are my drawings. I designed Spyro.

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  7. Sinnamon Jam12:53 AM

    Whoa
    That is so cool!

    What was Insomniac like when they first started off? Did you draw anything else for them?

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  8. Charles Z1:12 AM

    I drew Spyro and other dragons for the first game plus incidental characters. I did some drawing on the second Spyro game and that was it. Insomniac was for the most part cool to work with. Their art department really needed help at the time. They trained with me at one point and got better. Spyro was created fast. By the end of the second day of the project I had him nailed.

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