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Prerelease:Spyro: Year of the Dragon/Concept Art

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This is a sub-page of Prerelease:Spyro: Year of the Dragon.

Former Animation Director for Insomniac Games Oliver Wade released the following initial concept art showing a few of the characters seen in the game, as well as a few that weren't.

Concept Art

Bianca

Spyro3-ConceptArtBianca.jpg

Concept art of Bianca. The design of her cloak has some form of pattern on it and she appears to be wearing a necklace. Her tunic is sleeveless and more plain and she isn't wearing any shoes. She is also seen holding up some sort of magic ball, while in the final game she's never seen using her magic in this way. Bianca also seems to have a more menacing demeanor than her final appearance, but this may be purely down to an inability to present this personality through the limited polygons in her in-game design.

The Sorceress

Spyro3-ConceptArtSorceress.jpg

An early design of the Sorceress which looks completely different from the ultimately less refined one seen in the final game. The most striking element is that she has wings, which may imply that she was at first either some sort of dragon, or perhaps a "dinosaur" of some kind adorned with wings, not unlike Crush. She also has horns and hair that are unseen in her final design, and she isn't wearing any of the clothing that she would later on in development. The design of the egg she is holding is also quite different from the final one, showing a wavy pattern instead of a spotty pattern. No known versions of the game are known to contain an egg resembling this design.

Hmmm...
To do:
The rest of the images are sourced, ideally find a source for this one too.
Spyro3-ConceptArtLaterSorceress.jpg

A later design for the Sorceress, this one much closer to her final one albeit with still a handful of differences. Namely, she is seen wearing a cape and lipstick, things never seen anywhere on her final design (though the Sorceress does wear lipstick in her Reignited redesign). Moreover, her ruff is perfectly circular instead of quilted, her tail is longer, and the egg mounted on her scepter has a different design.

Sheila

Spyro3-ConceptArtSheila.jpg

Early concept art of Sheila. This design features elements different from the final appearance of the character, such as Sheila having horns and wearing an orange shirt and red boxing gloves. Her eyes are also red instead of green, and there are a few pencil strokes indicating that she may have had hair at some point.

Sgt. Byrd

Spyro3-ConceptArtSgtByrd.jpg

Concept art of Sergeant Byrd. The design on his helmet is a star instead of a military symbol and his belt lacks pockets. Interestingly enough early in-game designs for Sgt. Byrd diverged from this design slightly, lacking any semblance of a belt at all and having a slightly different hat design. The final design is closer to the concept art in this regard. There also appears to be a faint spiral in each of his eyes, though this might be an artefact from an earlier version of the drawing.

As a side note, according to Oliver Wade, Sgt. Byrd was first conceived as a pig wearing a jetpack, only for the hire-ups at Insomniac to request the species to be changed.[1] However, there have also been claims from those that have interviewed Wade that it was in fact Agent 9 who was intended on being a pig, and that Sgt. Byrd allegedly being a pig was simply a miscommunication.[2][3]

Bentley

Spyro3-ConceptArtBentley.jpg

Concept art of Bentley. Here Bentley has two separate eyebrows as opposed to a unibrow, and he also appears to have a differently-coloured section on his stomach that is nowhere to be seen in his final design.

Agent 9

Spyro3-ConceptArtAgent9.jpg

Concept art of Agent 9. The design of his shirt is a bit different, featuring a zipper and an unidentified logo. Early in-game designs of the character featured significantly smaller eyes than what was seen in the concept art, for some reason.

Tractor Sheep

Spyro3-ConceptArtTractorSheep.jpg

An early design for the Tractor Sheep in Country Speedway. This design features small elements not seen on the final appearance of the character, such as the character looking more like an actual sheep than some indeterminate mammal, wearing a striped shirt, and driving a differently designed tractor. The Tractor Sheep actually began looking like sheep in Spyro Reignited Trilogy, so perhaps this concept art was featured in the design documents for Spyro 3 given to Toys For Bob.

As a side note, it's also nice to notice that the licence plate of the tractor is labelled with the name Alain. Alain is a French name (hence the beret and the striped shirt of the sheep), and it may very well be a reference to the word "laine" which means "wool" in French.

Dragon

Spyro2-ConceptArtRandomDragon.jpg

Concept art of a cut dragon character simply referred to as "Random Dragon". As revealed in an interview with Wade, this character was supposedly intended as a secondary NPC in Bamboo Terrace, meaning that it was likely a one-off character.

(Source: Early concept art by Oliver Wade)