DeviantArt post

Ooh look, some Spyro fanart. I guess that means I'm officially aboard the hype train. I made a video recently talking about my thoughts on the whole Reignited Trilogy thing, and you can view it on my YouTube channel here: I, Too, Am Excited about Spyro Reignited! (A Short Discussion)

Anyway, I love Spyro's new design (better than the original IMO), and one change you might not notice at first is that he has thumbs now. That's certainly a welcome change in my book. All the older dragons had hands, so it only makes sense. I got an idea to draw him using his new thumbs to play a game, and Crash Bandicoot seemed like a nice choice. The original title was "Spyro's New Thumbs". You can see a WIP in the DeviantArt post that shows the basic idea I had.

As you can probably tell, I struggled a lot while drawing Spyro's face. I'm still not 100% happy with it. It's probably mostly the angle. Anyway, when it came to the shading, I made a purple overlay with the TV as the light source. It produced a very saturated shadow, and I liked it. I darkened the background and added lighting effects to create something more atmospheric than what I'd imagined at first. Then, at the last minute, I decided to make it into more of a "gaming night" and add Sparx and some pizza. (The version without him is also in the DA post.)

I took the most influence from Spyro's Reignited design (q.v. the added thumbs), but I had to go with Classic Sparx. I just had to. Even to me, as someone who never played the games and therefore isn't influenced by nostalgia, the new version doesn't look right. It's not a dealbreaker, but I still vastly prefer him in Classic style. I spent a lot of time looking at pictures of a PS1 and controller - I considered using the original controller with no analogue sticks, but the DualShock came along before Spyro did, so I guess this makes more sense.