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See How Insomniac Hatched Spyro In Concept Art Gallery

Characters don't pop into the world fully formed. For the vast majority of the time, our favorite heroes and villains are the result of a long cycle of brainstorming, sketching, and revising. If you'd like to see an excellent glimpse of how a well-known character was born, from concept to the end result, the Animation Academy has a fairly exhaustive look at Spyro the Dragon's genesis.

The series of drawings shows how Spyro evolved from a one-word description – dragon – into something significantly more interesting. Insomniac designer Charles Zembillas started with a few humble sketches, and then he iterated on them until he arrived at something that's significantly more interesting. The gallery is a fascinating look at the creative process, whether or not you're a Spyro fan.

 

Thanks for the tip, Chris!

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Comments
  • Oh my gawsh, REALLY? FOR ME?! FIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRST!!!!!!!!!
  • It would be interesting to see what he would look like if they scrapped his character model.

  • I wish Spyro went back to Insomniac, he hasn't been the same since they left him...
  • I'm glad they didn't decide to make him look like a fat dachshund.

  • What I find to be a coincidence is that I've been playing through Spyro 2 and Spyro 3 for the past week..... Gotta love the PSN store!

  • Everything is coming into place...your move.
  • He looks kinda like Figment in the more robust sketches; the color scheme they eventually went with is almost the same too.

  • Aaaahh good times good times.

    Now I feel like poppin in some spyro in my PS1

  • Aaaahh good times good times. Now I feel like poppin in some spyro in my PS1 and fry some nasty norks.
  • I submitted this tip :D :D :D :D

  • Aww look at the little cutie. How I miss those ps1 games. For about a year spyro 1 and 2 were the only games I owned and I just played them all day everyday.

  • i miss the old spyro.

  • We miss you, Classic Spyro.

  • He's so cute!!!!!

  • a pretty cool gallery. It's always neat to look at someone else's thought process

  • He's blue, not purple...
  • I've always loved Spyro because he served as a somewhat inspirational character to me as a kid. I was pretty small, so I felt insignificant compared to others. Spyro was this little dragon that everyone underestimated, but he came through courageously while laughing at the face of evil to save all his friends. It was really cool to see that you don't need to look a certain way to do great things. Anyway, enough of the sappy story. :P It's really cool to see these sketches on how he became to be. I loved your Spyro games, Insomniac! I wish you still had the rights to make more. :(

  • insomniac made a great character model for spyro, then the series got bought and now he looks stupid.
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