Thursday, March 28, 2013

Rethinking Crash Bandicoot - Part 5

A little more fun with Crash trying out new and different looks. These are my most recent attempts. For the Bandicoot purists out there I thought I'd take a trip back to the classic Crash with the second of these drawings. Thanks for following along.


6 comments:

Bharathi Anthonysamy said...

Thanks a lot Charles for showcasing your various designs and redesigns of Crash. It's cool to see your choice of posing for Crash when drawing expression sheets. Crash Bandicoot was a massive influence to my Minor project at University!! :)

I also found this video that was uploaded recently by Did You Know Gaming which features a lot of your original Crash drawings!! Here's the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaLgYPn_Fqs

Charles Z said...

Thanks for your comment Bharathi and for the link. The video has a lot of views in a short period of time. Over 200,000 in just a couple of days. Good to see it's getting this kind of attention.

Unknown said...

Nice as always Charles!

My good friend HPZoner pointed out that the stripes/tattoos on Crash's arms resembles the ones Daxter has, did you take inspiration from that or the modern Crash Radical Ent. designed? And are those bandages wrapped around the gloves too? They look cool and make Crash look more light a fighter!

Also, I saw that DYKG video, very detailed with the stuff behind Crash. Most of it comes from the fansite Crash Mania and Andy Gavin's blog. I wish he went more on to the later games (i.e. WOC, Twinsaity, COTT, etc...)

Also Charles, I posted this before (I recall last Summer). It's a short behind-the-scenes of Crash 1 from a Video Gaming TV Show, you can see your designs/emotions for Crash at 0:44 on the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzaaQTJYfCs

Charles Z said...

Thanks Pat.

Any similarity to design elements on Daxter is just a coincidence. These are doodles that just wind up being what they are. The thought came to me to extend his gloves up his forearms and I wrapped them. It does make him look more like a fighter.

I recall the video from before. Interesting to see my drawings showcased.

Regarding the video that Bharathi linked to, I can enhance some of the historical info from what I know and experienced. The name change from Willy to Crash was initiated from a call I made to ND after I found a little Willy the Wombat figure at a local store. That's when they realized there was a character by that name already. Also, these are Andy's accounts and not what I heard from Jason. There was a big sensitivity to Japan after Crash 1 and some of the changes to the game were motivated by input from Sony Japan. I'm sure there were differences of opinion with Universal Interactive but from what I was told by Jason a lot of the changes were made in deference to Japanese sensibilities. I've mentioned this before and would like to reiterate it again since no mention of this is made in the official history of Crash.

Anonymous said...

Amazing drawing as always Charles.
As a "purist" (a much better title than "fanboy") I obviously like the second one much but it's always interesting see new stuff.

The video is interesting too, the guy who voiced it is a big Crash fan and he reviewed the first three games and Crash Bash. Here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBQgRM3pWsA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJdng6ewyVQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dym2NdHnIRk

However is this the Willy Wombat you found?: http://www.segagagadomain.com/saturn6/willy-f.jpg

Charles Z said...

I don't think that's what I saw. The toy I found was a small figure that looked different. This character of Willy Wombat looks inspired by the design of Crash. Maybe whoever owned Willy Wombat decided to develop the character when they discovered that something by the same name was being done at Universal.