Monday, January 31, 2022

Spyro the Dragon on January 30 1997

These drawings are from the original development of the character that would become Spyro.

It had been a little more than 2 weeks since I started to create the very first concepts for Insomniac Games. I was in the process of refining and defining. Insomniac was very excited about the character and the images I was coming up with. At this point in the creation of Spyro I was directed to really push his expressions.

This is the way it works. You dig and explore through concept sketches then as the character emerges a commitment is made towards the final design. Once you've nailed the look then you test it out and see how it functions through expressions and action / attitude posing as the personality emerges.

Note for historians and archivists: The pages are sequential but they're numbered incorrectly.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love it

Anonymous said...

Your work on Spyro was iconic. Im just curious though, what characters did you design in the 2nd and 3rd Spyro games? The character art styles look alot different from the 1st game.

Charles Z said...

Thank you. I did some work on Spyro 2 at the beginning. It wasn't as extensive as the first game. After that I wasn't involved with Spyro as I never heard from Insomniac again although they did send their some of their crew to take my character design class once I started my school.

Anonymous said...

Ah that makes sense. Do you by any chance remember who you designed in the 2nd game?

Charles Z said...

I think I designed some larger dragons.

Anonymous said...

Love this little guy… reminds me of a little guy named peck.

Charles Z said...

peck ... :)

Anonymous said...

Do you have any drawings of him?

Charles Z said...

Just one.

Anonymous said...

Would you consider sharing him?

Charles Z said...

It's not possible.