darkSpyro

What would you guys think a classic-modern Spyro would look like? Please do not say Skylanders, just think up on it your own. Would he be smaller? Chubbier? Meaner? You decide!

Skylanders. He looks like an actual lizard(different color shades in scales, limbs that extend to the sides instead of directly down). I'm thinking on my own that his design is more realistic than the previous ones for sure, and nowadays realistic dragons are the trend.

Well... I'd like to just say a dragon, but, he's being changed all the time until one day... who knows what will happen then.

Yeah I just wish platformers were famous again, we need more platformers in this era, it's too many shoot-em-ups and action, y'know?

Plataformers are action games, dunno what are you on about. And if you want plataformers, off the top of my head there were plenty of good releases recently- Shovel Knight, Azure Striker Gunvolt,Super Mario 3D World,Steam version of Battleblock Theater... If you stop waiting for Spyro to be what you want and look for other franchises, you'll see it's not too much of everything else, just too little of what you think you need.

Yeah, I guess you're right. Sorry for the stubborness.

Of all the Spyros, I think the "Dawn Of The Dragon" one looks the best.

Quote: Archae

Of all the Spyros, I think the "Dawn Of The Dragon" one looks the best.

Might I ask why? Like nothing tied to the game, but what of the design.

I really don't understand how anyone can like DotD Spyro's design, but then, I know my anatomy and realize that a body like that wouldn't be able to even breathe, let alone walk, fly, or anything else.

I personally liked it. I thought it was pretty cool when I was ten. Still think he looks cool. Even with the Krome Spyro, he would still be unable to fly due to his wing shape, and he wouldn't be able to hold his head up, especially counting his large horns. Cynders design from Krome was no better, even when she was in her evil form. Incredibly skinny body, teeny mouth, thin, thin legs, she would break.

Let's just say that anatomy for both game's don't really count.

I liked the DotD Spyro better because I felt he had a more realistic, well, not "realistic", but semi-realistic look. He felt more like a dragon. They without a doubt screwed up on their sixes how ever, it's as if teen Spyro and teen Cynder were excessively smaller than Ignitus and The Guardians, they are puny compared to them. I would have expected that they would have been at least half the size of Ignitus.

Eh, can see where you're coming from because that's pretty much what I thought back then. But now since DOTD just screams 'look at me,I'm more realistic than Krome's games!' he's just another design that seems that was rushed out the door at the last minute hoping it would pander to the fans because he's kinda older than usual.
Not to mention that like pretty much all other designs his forehead got to ridiculous measures. Skyro's is still pretty big but at least his eyebrows compensate it, while DOTD Spyro seems to have a permanent emo frown.

I can never get over the fact that DotD Spyro's spine is literally broken (it's snapped at the base of the neck and fractured in his mid-back and at his tail base), he has an extra ankle joint (that is also broken), his wings are ridiculously too small to enable flight, his chest is so grotesquely distended he would suffocate, and I don't even know how he eats with that massive overbite. Krome Spyro I could forgive many of the flaws because he was obviously a cartoon, but DotD Spyro is trying waaaay too hard. At least Skyro could survive in his own body for more than two minutes (sturdy neck, sensible legs, cartoony enough that the flying makes sense, etc). Same with iSpyro; his design is cartoony enough that one doesn't have to be so concerned for his health, but it was also clearly designed more practically. DotD Spyro looked okay in gameplay itself and in the concept art, but all his official art and cutscene appearances are just downright disturbing (Cynder is the same and sometimes worse; how does her scrawny neck not snap?! o_o ).

Quote: Bifrost

Quote: Archae

Of all the Spyros, I think the "Dawn Of The Dragon" one looks the best.

Might I ask why? Like nothing tied to the game, but what of the design.

I can't really put my finger on it exactly, I just like that particular dragon design.

Call me stubborn or what? Taking my time to draw and label this, I am trying to figure out what is so wrong with his bone structure? He looks fine, in fact he looks like a dragon really. I had to compare him from other dragon bones, and using numerous bones from humans to bats.

If he were much older, his neck would be considerably longer, but as you can see here, he is still fairly young.

This is nice and all, but it's not official and only barely reflects the horror that is DotD Spyro's actual design. Even in this fan work, his chest is still so grotesque that he wouldn't be able to breathe let alone fly, his legs are all broken, his neck is still snapped at the base, and those wings couldn't lift anything even half his size.

It's fine that you like DotD Spyro and I can see how the design has the generic "cool" appeal, but you're not going to be able to change my mind on it being utterly horrific anatomically as well as artistically.

Alrighty, well we all have our opinions so I respect that.

I don't understand how is chest is so disfigured to you? I can understand the ankles, they make his feet a bit flip-floppity. His general appearance reminds me of a dog. His wings let alone make him unable to fly, as his "wing skin" stops at his ulna, which is should actually stretch to his pelvis. They mainly kept his wing like that to pay tribute to Krome is my guess.

Yeah, that's DEFINATELY not the same structure as the official model. For starters, his supposed knee cap nearly touches his toes, and the back of his neck is nearly always curved(even on the position of that fanart, it'd have a slight one which would push his throat to the front), and if I must really nitpick his snout is at eye level and not below.
The artist made the proportions a bit less of an eyesore, but don't expect Étranges Libellules to have done anywhere close - same can apply to their writing compared to some fanwork.

The reason Spyro's chest is so disfigured is that it is huge and distended in a very unnatural way. The shape of it is so awkward and set so forward (going almost past his own nose in the official art) that the heart is not secure and the lungs are crammed into a painful and fatal position. His ankles are more than floppy: they're literally broken in at least one place (two, if I remember rightly) and so are his front toes. The reason DotD Spyro can't fly has nothing to do with where his wing membranes connect and the fact that his wings are a) waaaaaay too small to lift a body that heavy and b) he doesn't have the proper shoulder/chest muscle structure to get off the ground.

ANB/TEN Spyro has some of these same characteristics, but his spine is much less mangled, his chest is smaller with the limbs and organs more in their proper place, and his tiny wings don't allow flight at all (which only makes sense). Classic Spyro is an even better design, since he's literally a snake with legs (the line of his neck and tail blend smoothly into his torso and it's all roughly the same width all around his body, just like a snake); his head is also smaller and balanced on his neck in a much more natural way, and the games themselves say he can only fly because dragon wings are literally made of magic.

Then why are his knees in the exact shape of the older version? They both nearly touch the ground! If they made his wings as large in-game as they were in the picture, he would have had some chance of flying, but in game they were quite small. I do have to admit though I like the thickness of his legs better, and he doesn't have the extra ankle joint in his front legs, unlike the DotD Spyro.

It makes me incredibly curious how Krome would have developed a "teen" Spyro on the other hand. It's too bad they didn't keep any of the scrapped concept art for the older version of him.

EDIT

I just wanted to change the post, not remove the topic.

Oh, okay! :)

Y'know...I take back everything I said about ANB/TEN Spyro being able to survive with that body. XD I didn't remember him looking so horrible, but now that I see it again...yikes. o_o He looks like he might survive a little longer than DotD Spyro, but not by much. His skull is horribly malformed (how does he eat?! o_o), both of his back legs are shattered (the completely separated ankle joints must be excruciating), and his spine is still cracked at the base of both his neck and his tail. Ouch. I guess it's just a lot more noticeable in DotD Spyro. Poor LoSpyro, what an anguished existence.

I suspect Krome would have just continued to use the designs they already had for Spyro and Cynder (there is at least one piece of their concept art which shows him looking the same) since they couldn't possibly have aged at all while being literally frozen in time. It's just the change in art style that makes people think Spyro got any older.

One word everyone...

Magic.

^ I'd take that if LoS overall wasn't trying so hard to be gritty and "realistic". But since they are and since, canonically, no magic is ever really mentioned in the games, it doesn't fly (just like air through LoSpyro's crushed, mutated vascular system :D).

It's a mix between realism and cartoony. Even with Dawn of the Dragon you could still it had that cartoonish sense. Dragons don't exist, so they might as well think up how they would look!

What about other character designs? What didn't you like about the rest? Who was your favorite, most "realistic" looking character there was?

I mentioned in my first post that, even as a cartoon, DotD Spyro is still badly designed. He looked decent in the concept art, but he translated into 3D horrifically. I'm not really a fan of any of the LoS designs except maybe Krome's Cynder ideas and their take on Hunter. EL did a nice-ish job with Hunter, but after I saw all the copy-paste cheetah tribesmen, the neatness wore off. Gaul was a nice over-the-top cartoon villain design (don't know how he stayed upright on those weeny little legs, though), but again, it wore off somewhat after seeing his near-clone Skabb. I've seen some really great concept work from Krome and EL for the LoS games and it's always bugged me that none of that ever really made it into the games proper.

Well that's because the games were rushed. I bet if they had more time all three would have been great. Especially the third one, as much as I enjoy it, there are way, way too many plot holes. Hunter's design was pretty sweet, but I do have to agree with you that the copy-paste was terrible.

^ I definitely agree. What I've always liked about LoS was its potential and it never failed to be disappointing when the games just didn't come close to what you could tell they were going for. DotD would have been a little better had Krome been able to make it (since the team there knew the characters and did have some input for the game's story in a positive way). But I'm not going to fool myself and say that DotD would have been spectacular had Krome made it; it would still have been mediocre LoS, but it would have been better than what we got from EL. (And kudos to EL; they did what they could, programming and designing everything from scratch in under a year and not even speaking English to help with script improvements.)

I honestly never understood how DOTD Spyro's body works. It's like, a massive chest with a small rear or something connected to it. There's like no stomach at all, and I never understood how the company believed that's good anatomy.



I think Cynder's DOTD design is slightly better because there's less chest, but she's way too skinny.

Cynder's better than Spyro except for the twig stomach. TFB probably had a good laugh while redesigning her and still keeping the curves for Skylanders but making a lot more sense.
Like, it's not even a problem that the anatomy is wrong, or it's cartoonish. But when you make your game's gimmick be "Co-op!Edgy--I mean for older audiences!Realistic!" and manage to make weird crap like that, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Dragons aren't out there to have a set in stone anatomy, but reptiles exist everywhere and even if you don't want to make some lazy thing with a big belly and spread out limbs, you can at least take references to know how far you can go before it's just ridiculous to have limbs or neck supporting a mass of scales that looks like that.
Krome I let go except for some of the weirder stuff because they MEANT for a cartoonish, weird tone, as evidenced by the game's concept artist who had a few blog posts about it. Everything was crooked and exaggerated to focus on the characteristics and the fantasy over being possible IRL or not. That was the game's charm,really,something that Étranges Libellules just threw out of the window for no reasons other than wanting to be next-gen(and Razz, considering the engine for DOTD shows up in some of their other games, I'm not THAT sure they created it specifically for this).

Augh! Their spines are literally snapped behind the shoulders! D: ;_; How is that cool?! It's horrible! D:

I'm with you guys, Bifrost and DarkCynder_543. As for EL using the same engine, I didn't know that. Still, DotD was very obviously rushed in every other aspect and I can't help but remember that no one had ever heard of that developer before the game came out (or since, for that matter; are they even still around?).

No, EL was closed down since 2012.

I...am not surprised, really. Krome's closing was a bit of a shock since they had a track record of making games that were at least decent (Blade Kitten was really cool as I recall), but EL...yeah. They had potential, I guess, but that's really all I can say about them.

Quote: Sesshomaru75

I'm laughing at how you're all complaining about the anatomy of a purple dragon from a video game. lol
It's really concerning, to be honest, especially since DoTD was terrible to begin with. xD

No, we're just discussing. Can't do anything about it but it's kind of fascinating to notice how horribly irrealistic DOTD's design got for a realistic-ish game.
And hey, at least no one is complaining about Skylanders as usual.

Hm... And what of the Classic adult dragons? Overall their humanoid-but-muscular shape seems believable except the wings aren't really going to lift them off the ground any time soon(even the AHT ones), but could they really stand(and sometimes lean over) the way they did with such tiny legs?

I noticed that the AHT adult dragons had ears, while the younger ones don't. :I

Sess: It's not so much the anatomy we're discussing here as the horrific art design. Anatomy is the least of DotD Spyro's problems; his freaking spine is cracked so badly his entire lower body is sliding toward the ground! D8 How is he alive?! He can't even make it as a cartoon, the design is just that bad.

The adult dragons in the classic games had pretty reasonable anatomy for bipeds (and we saw that some of them would lean onto their front legs to be quadrupedal from time to time). If they flew at all, it would be entirely by magic (which was actually established in canon; their wings are 100% made of magic so powerful it impacts the world at large, so I'm sure flight isn't really an issue). Haha, but imagine those big louts doing a speedway challenge! You know they do. XD

I really liked what AHT implied about the dragon life cycle. They start as earless quadrupeds and grow up to be floppy eared bipeds. It's neat. :)

Holy crap, what the hell. I cannot fathom that some of you would debate this hard and draw a skeleton for a fictional character.

Quote: zer0dch

Holy crap, what the hell. I cannot fathom that some of you would debate this hard and draw a skeleton for a fictional character.

Hardcore Spyro fans, tutt, tutt, tutt.

Quote: SuperSpyroFan

Quote: zer0dch

Holy crap, what the hell. I cannot fathom that some of you would debate this hard and draw a skeleton for a fictional character.

Hardcore Spyro fans, tutt, tutt, tutt.

Yeah,we're totally namecalling and being rude and doing things that people do to argue over something OH SO pointless.
Unlike 'real fans',that spend their time in General only saying how Classic is the only good series ever and everyone else is wrong. Let people discuss things they want if they're not being jerks about it.

Quote: Bifrost

Quote: SuperSpyroFan

Quote: zer0dch

Holy crap, what the hell. I cannot fathom that some of you would debate this hard and draw a skeleton for a fictional character.

Hardcore Spyro fans, tutt, tutt, tutt.

Yeah,we're totally namecalling and being rude and doing things that people do to argue over something OH SO pointless.
Unlike 'real fans',that spend their time in General only saying how Classic is the only good series ever and everyone else is wrong. Let people discuss things they want if they're not being jerks about it.

I was joking around you know.

Yeah, like someone can tell sarcasm over the internet without a clear giveaway. Sounding a bit too condenscing or similar is hard to tell when people say that seriously nowadays.

Quote: Bifrost

Yeah, like someone can tell sarcasm over the internet without a clear giveaway. Sounding a bit too condenscing or similar is hard to tell when people say that seriously nowadays.

Whut? Okay then.

The adult dragons in the very first three were great. When they stood up, they had short legs, but they were also chunky and muscly, giving them good support, and their tails coming in handy as well, kind of like a kangaroo, minus the hopping. We all can agree that the dragons from the original trilogy were the best with anatomy, they were realistic, even if they were in a cartoon style.

I do believe that when the older a dragon gets, the stronger their hind legs get, and can enable them to stand up, and that they can also sit back down of course. I never played AHT before, it looked interesting but I was skeptic on getting the game.

Also I did the skeleton because I A) Enjoy drawing and B ) Felt like it??

Not doing anybody harm.

One thing I wish they'd carried to any other Spyro games was the different kinds of dragons in the Insomniac trilogy. If you pay attention, all five kinds of dragon have unique physical characteristics and I always thought that was cool. Before DotD ruined the idea entirely, I had a head canon that the Guardians were just the Peacekeepers and there were other distinct dragon races in the world.

I have to agree on that, as Peacekeepers were known to be big, bulky and very muscular. Plus they were warriors and kept peace, hence the name "peacekeeper." They should have also included some more of the original characters, or NPC's rather.

I think Cynder would be a Dreamweaver cause of her long and fluid body, similar to Lateef. It's that or a Magic Crafter.