darkSpyro

https://gdcvault.com/play/1023...f-Character-and

I got curious and followed up on the GDC 2016 presentation. I'm not sure if this has been posted in video form.

ooh there's some interesting unused characters in here!

makin me miss skylanders

https://www.gdcvault.com/play/...er-s-Cinematics

There’s also a few interesting pieces of artwork in here.

Woah how are you finding all of these?!

Quote: ThunderEgg

Woah how are you finding all of these?!

They're all in the GDC Vault. There's a lot of content there. I really miss the art direction of these games... The landscapes were dreamy, and where else are you going to find a boxing vampire and a helicopter dinosaur? Wish there was more information on Lorne Balfe's score. I listen to the soundtracks quite a bit.

Ahh. I have a feeling I'm going to be exploring that site, then!

You're right; they did have a ton of unique character ideas, and interesting art direction.

This is great! Before we only had the individual slides and they didn't make much sense without context.

This also means someone out in the world owns the 3D print of the gargoyle character. The speaker said something like they’d post the figure to the official Vicarious Visions Facebook, but I briefly skimmed it and didn’t see anything.

If you’re looking for more, you can see some character designs in the preview images of one of the Ebay listings for Clutch. The water gargoyle and yarn monster are there, as well as new faces. It’s not a lot, but it’s cool to see.

I just found these, too. From Jeff Bellio's blog: https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ApC...echSuits_05.jpg
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zoq..._TreeRex_01.jpg

Seems like that first one was an early EARLY Tech/Water Giant. Kinda like Tree Rex with a skirt but it'd probably be a nightmare to put on a figure...

Quote: Bifrost

Seems like that first one was an early EARLY Tech/Water Giant. Kinda like Tree Rex with a skirt but it'd probably be a nightmare to put on a figure...

I think it’s more Swap Force or Superchargers related, since “Nova” and “SuperNova” are code names I’ve seen repeated throughout the early development stage of both games. Definitely on Vicarious Visions’ end and not for the DS games. It’d be cool if it was a Giant, but it’s probably a scrapped enemy or something. As for the Tree Rex concept, I’ve got no clue.

But look at this! We could’ve had a chameleon!



I really recommend you all seek out these visual artists, because their portfolios often have goodies inside them. There’s even a spin-around model of one of the early Swappers (like Aftershock and Krayken) on Artstation.

Ohoho these guys are kinda cute!

Jeff Murchie and Dave E. Phillips have both been given the okay on several pieces of artwork. I haven’t seen much from I-Wei Huang, however. Cursed NDAs. In any case, taking a quick look at the series’ art department can give you a couple of new artists to look into.

Swap Force was being made before SSA was even out! No wonder the games clash so much. Activision really can be horrible considering they indeed were counting on all their eggs before they hatched and fully planning yearly releases from the start.
Finally had time to sit down and watch it all. For better or worse, this does explain VV's... More polarizing art direction. I never didn't like Dave's art but when they literally have to be running 24/7 alongside TFB who are probably crunching, no wonder the art and the variety isn't consistent.

And damn, I forgot we lost the pictures from this GDC. I know the samurai skeleton from memory(she was basically colored like Grim Creeper), but we never got a picture of the gargoyle's final toy.

Quote: Drawdler

Anything come out for SA? I feel like a lot of art for that game must just be lost otherwise, or whoever has it thinks nobody is interested or stuff (but it's still the best one)

I guess now was a good time to miss having any Skylanders community huh, no good fansites rn, wanted to look at older forums on here, it's weird to see you post again Fox, goodbuye again tho lol

Hi, Drawdler! Yeah, I know lol. I was just feeling nostalgic, then I wound up discovering a handful of Vicarious Visions development art. Would love to chat with you again. Yeah, this community isn’t really around anymore. I’m not really into the looks of Ring of Heroes and hated Academy, so I’m only held on by the unlikely chance something else comes up about Skylanders, whether it be new or old behind-the-scenes content.

Not much on Spyro’s Adventure. I-Wei has a few old Kaos concepts on his blog, but I believe that was shared already. I’d love if all the games got art books...and that the art books weren’t for employees only. Wish you luck on uncovering SA art.

Quote: Bifrost

Swap Force was being made before SSA was even out! No wonder the games clash so much. Activision really can be horrible considering they indeed were counting on all their eggs before they hatched and fully planning yearly releases from the start.
Finally had time to sit down and watch it all. For better or worse, this does explain VV's... More polarizing art direction. I never didn't like Dave's art but when they literally have to be running 24/7 alongside TFB who are probably crunching, no wonder the art and the variety isn't consistent.

And damn, I forgot we lost the pictures from this GDC. I know the samurai skeleton from memory(she was basically colored like Grim Creeper), but we never got a picture of the gargoyle's final toy.

We have the Frankenstein girl; you can find her with a quick google search of "Darkspyro GDC". I don't remember much else from the presentation. They had art books out for view and some Riptide and Spitfire prototypes, but I'm unsure about other characters. Poor Water Gargoyle. Out there all alone.

The frankenstein was from screenshots I managed to save, yeah, but the samurai is just gone. I think I was able to see the instagram one and then it just disappeared by the time I came back to save it.

Also watching the animation bootcamp one, there's a LOT of unreleased artworks for Superchargers, including bosses and Hugo with his hoodie up. Wonder if there's a way to get just the slides from this video like we did with the other one...?

I'll take a look around and see if I can scrounge up a finished Ghost Samurai. Maybe it's buried on Twitter somewhere. As for slides, it doesn't look like that's an option available at the moment. Maybe in the future? I didn't think a video version of the Character Design panel would ever come.

Ta-da! https://twitter.com/humbleblee...548786091667457 Buried on Twitter. Thanks Dave!
It's all coming back to me now. I forgot about them. https://twitter.com/humbleblee...510159726927872

The GDC-landers have been found. I think?

Yeah, just the gargoyle missing, but since they printed it afterwards and sent it as a giveaway who knows if that ever got anywhere.

At least we've found the samurai again! To think she'd probably be in 7 since they wouldn't waste that kind of work... But that's just making ourselves sad, I'd rather stash this away for art reference(and put it on the wiki if I ever get the patience again to play with MultiUpload) instead of moping that it didn't get used.

Bringing this back. https://imgur.com/a/pmuPq
Also this is something Vicarious Visions does often apparently. They had another art show in 2016 called Unrestricted. No images from that one. Still can't get over those characters found in the Crash Bandicoot remasters. Template Template lives on.

Quote: Drawdler

Play Skylanders again nonce, if you didn't sell yours. I never moved on from that, I look for tons in SA. TT still gets me. SC was fun but not replayable, way too much in the way of the little good parts and not enough gets going. SG is okay I'd just rather play others. Didn't really play the others recent enough. I dread going back to SF and being unable to use my boy Shroomboom because he's gonna crash the game if I do.

I guess I'm making a Discord then! I need a Steam account, too. You kids and your newfangled social medias and internets.

Funnily enough, it wasn't the Skylanders I gave away, but the consoles(the receivers didn't want the games). Except for the handhelds, which I use to catch Pokémon or fail at Monster Hunter every once in a while. Not much of a gamer. Still have all my Skylanders though. You have Clutch? I was considering buying it, but a lot of art finds its way on the internet. I figured I'd save the money. Strata's enough to satiate this drought.

Template Template is straight up on the storyboards on the second video(easy to tell because they have no ears but have a tail) - someone at VV really likes that guy, and I hope at least that little shard of Skylanders gets to live on. I think all info on 7 is going to be undiscovered for a long time, though, if ever, unless more gets leaked. The NDAs for Legend of Spyro STILL haven't expired, despite the writers and producers' willingness to participate in interviews.

Those NDAs are troublesome. That’s incredible that the Legend of Spyro series hasn’t got free of them. Hoping some more Sky 7 game data gets revealed somehow.

On SA, have these been seen already? https://www.beautiful-danger.net/new-page http://joedraws.com/?p=924

Looking back at first link. I guess this means Light and Dark elements were planned from the start. They used the word "minion" instead of "Skylander." There's also some new and repurposed characters. This is so bizarre to see, but in a good way.

TFB's first GDC confirmed Spyro and Skylanders were always one single pitch. This new link Bluefox found makes it seem like they initially went with a Spyro game with extra playable characters, then a game with Spyro as the mentor(still LOS design in that pitch), then Spyro as playable replacing Flavius(Flame Dragon).
Slobbering Mutticus as a Skylander is really weird, but makes sense.

The Template Template sketches are on the GDC video, along with a dragon version of them. The dev said VV was using them at the very earliest stage, and made Krayken, Aftershock and Unnamed Air soon after to pitch the game. Not much reason to use him in Superchargers storyboards if they didn't find them amusing.

Scroll and there's miscellaneous Skylanders concept art. I like that Rattle Snake Jake from Rango is in the Wild West scene. Or Rattle Shake's gotten a lot more intimidating since I last saw him. Maybe it's a new haircut. I'm pretty confident that one Academy image has been passed around for a while. Imaginators was a big blur to me, and I'm not too familiar with development of Giants, so I don't know if this content is all too intriguing. Was going to post something from Universe, then learned that it wasn't new at all. I was very confused by that dragonbunny...

@Drawdler. I've got one up and running. I don't think there's a way to search for users? I'm totally new to this so I could be wrong, but I didn't find anything, and I'm absolutely terrified of potentially sending a friend request to the wrong person lol.

It's got a bunch of scrapped levels and a Battle Arena, which surprises no one since at least 5 Imaginators levels were just trashed halfway through. Pretty neat artwork for existing things though!

Dragonbunnies were the only thing left from the old Universe development - apparently there were supposed to be critters for every element and a story mode-like dungeon.

It's funny looking back on my initial reaction to those Universe models. Gasped and everything. I had no clue what those things were. I mean, if a flying demon skull with an exposed brain was considered to be a Skylander, why can't a small Spyro-lagomorph be one?

Getting real scarce. I'm mostly just seeing fanart and Reignited concepts. And art university assignments. These students were tasked with making a character that'd fit into the style of the games, which is very cool. I still have no idea how I found those Spyro's Kingdom pitches, really shocked by that. The Slobbering Mutticus is one of my favorite designs from these games, so grotesquely beautiful. I'm unsure if I would've liked it as a Skylander, however. I'll look through Strata sometime soon and see if there's crew members with potential leads. Going to stop searching for now. Have some parting gifts: Clearer image of a different Star Strike design. Level designs.

Now this image is REALLY interesting. It's from Michael Ebert's blog (https://www.beautiful-danger.net/new-page) that was linked above. Here are my observations:

- I guess Light and Dark elements were initially planned to be in SSA. They've made reference to the Shadow Realm, which could be related to the Shadow Realm in Spyro Shadow Legacy
- There's art of Fire Dragon AND Spyro. I guess they were separately present at some point. I wonder how they're related? Maybe Fire Dragon became Flavius..?
- Speaking of Spyro, he looks more like his TLOS version.
- Near the middle of the map, there's a place called "Hunter's Camp". Maybe they planned to have Hunter the Cheetah in SSA?
- "Mushroom Giants" (upper right) seems to take inspiration from TLOS
- "Giant's Folly". I can see they were thinking about giants even at this point in early development.
- There's a ton of unused characters and places in general!

EDIT: Also they seem to refer to Skylanders as "Minions" still.

Here it is, Drawdler!

http://www.etienne-badia.com/skylanders

As for the levels, the portfolio said SSA was planned to have 35 levels, so it was probably among those. They said that game layout was the very earliest so it probably doesn't indicate much other than the volcano's theme.

Drill-X didn't exist in the Alpha version of the game, we know this because of the Alpha Giants video - it was just a random machine that Kaos had. Iirc Card 81 is Amazibarrel which is a placeholder.



I recommend anyone who likes Giants a little bit watch this to the end - all the snarky placeholder dialogue, the Text-to-Speech lines, unfinished cutscenes and everything else are hilarious.

https://jasonpickthall.wixsite...taItem-j5s30jxd
https://jasonpickthall.wixsite...aItem-j5s30jxd1
Does anyone know what these were meant for? It says Swap Force, but vehicles definitely weren’t a thing. I originally thought it was fan art. Pickthall’s description says “Skylanders Pitch Material”; he’s worked on the series before. I’m thinking it’s Battlecast related. Forgive me if there’s something else explaining this on the website. I’m on mobile at the minute and phone’s a bit buggy. I said I was going to stop looking, but I’m just too curious...

He did some cards for battlecast yeah, but these aren't done in the same style. Maybe they were merch toys or Magic Items that got scrapped?

http://laurieannfranks.com/

There are some Skylander pieces in here under “Concept/Illustration”. The one that immediately caught my eye were for Giants. Apparently we were going to get cute domestic critters! That would’ve been fun. I don’t know if they’re just for atmosphere or if you could actually meet them. Swap Force at one point considered something similar with the fauna of Cloudbreak—Skylanders could bond and interact with them. Something like that, I think. I’ll get the actual description in the morning.

I remember seeing those in Artstation, except the critters! It seems they tried twice to push Chum Cannery as a level and it never got off the ground despite having half a level modeled, a shame.

I love that buffalo wings pun. Very cute. Give the Skylanders some pets! From the posts above about dragonbunnies and proto-Sidekicks, it seems like this idea has been looked at many times. Wow, so there was a chapter about stopping a company from turning Gillmen into chum? That's...very interesting. There's strange relationships in Skylands, because there are also dragon hunters, wizards who steal griffin eggs, and unicorn poachers.

Looking at Strata right now. Template Template is an absolute champion, the best Skylander. They’re divided up on one page, listing some initial concepts for how the swapping mechanic might work. Head for personality and buff, torso, arms, and tail for combat, legs for speed and jumping. VV was looking at many different ways for the character to break up. (I mentioned this a long time ago, but the cartoonish body horror and viscera in the drawings is very charming) The original Mesmeralda designs are beautiful; she’s got this horrible centipede body and slight mandibles—the later of which makes me cheer because the few insects and arthropods we’ve got in this series usually have super creepy lips and pearly whites. Oh, and that big boat monster I posted? Was for Swap Force.

On the animal thing: “We put a lot of effort into fleshing out the creatures of the world. One of our original gameplay mechanics allowed the player to learn special powers by earning their trust.” - David A. Rodriguez

Oh, and Drawdler, do you recall if there's anything related to Kung Fume Kingdom in Clutch? (Or any other scrapped levels?) You know me, still attached to those body-snatching weirdos. Kinda hard not to be since I dedicated about three years of my life to perpetual rambly brain dumps about them. I found it fun to explain their biology, like as to why Stink Bomb looked like that and not like this. Beyond the fact that nearly everything in Skylands is brachycephalic, he's likely a TMNT reference, and this is a fantasy game of hyper-stylized creatures. "So he's green because he's a walking ecosystem, like a sloth. A-and he actually has nostrils, he can just seal them up like a seal would for swimming!" - BlueFox, 2016. Honestly really helped me think about creature design.

As someone who has Clutch, I don't remember of anything related to Kung Fume Kingdom, but I can check again when I get home.

Thanks, HIHD.

Crap, I can’t find this photo of someone modeling Frog Knight. I saw it in an article on Vicarious Visions, but dismissed it as something that was likely seen already or just generally uninteresting. I’m not sure if that means Frog Knight was still being considered for game at the time or it was just for demonstration. I’ll keep looking. It was essentially an over the shoulder snapshot of an artist at a desktop.

In other news, I was reminded of that Game Jam they did. You know, the photos of that “Skylanders 5 leak”.

I'm not sure what Tech_Hamster would actually mean. Both Senseis are robots.

https://connect.unity.com/p/skylanders

————

requires no description

hes gonna give u a biiiig hug

Oooo, they postin' Clutch art on Tumblr, oooo.

Activision, quit with the NDAs. Let this dead fandom get what they want. It's like we're smuggling concept art.

*spams save to pc button* I SAW BAD JUJU! Shame I can't add her to the wiki. Seems like the villains were planned as figures as some point then, so the plans for them were around before Imaginators!

The vehicles also changed terrain and could combine. Boy that'd have saved a lot on toy roster bloat.

What tumblr tho

https://skylandersmutual.tumblr.com/tagged/concept-art

This topic hasn’t got shut down yet, so I think I’m in the clear to post that.