Crash Bandicoot: WARPED - N. Tropy

Here's something special for Crash fans. This has been sitting around and not seen by human eyes since the development of Crash 3. They're dated January 22, 1998. Right before the creation of Dingodile.

These are the very first concept sketches for the time manipulating N Tropy. The first sketch is original art. The doodle that I created as Naughty Dog described what they were looking for. The ones after that are photo copies. There's plenty more to follow and I think you'll really enjoy the art. My further contribution to the archiving of the visual history of Crash Bandicoot...

Here's a couple more early concept sketches of Nefarious Tropy from the development of Crash 3. I'm not exactly sure as to the sequence of the drawings so I'm breaking down the presentation in terms of how the character evolved design wise. Early on I gave him a device that would allow him to travel in time. Something that he would wear. My first idea was to give him a belt like contraption with a readout as to the year he intended to travel to. The drawings are dated January 22 1998.

Here we go with the next installment of how Nefarious Tropy came into being. Drawings dated from January 22 1998. I continued with the idea of a time travelling device that would be worn on the body. Eventually this evolved into something that would encase the character. The direction was a good one but in the first sketch (...) it looked as if he were pregnant.

Here's a couple more development images of N Tropy from Crash Bandicoot 3. Dated January 22 1998 which was the first design pass on the character. Two more sessions would follow a little later.

As the character of Nefarious Tropy continued to emerge his body gear time machine started to become more industrialized. Here's the next group of drawings that shows him evolving into this phase. The sketches are dated January 22 1998 and are photocopies of the originals.

These drawings from the development of Crash 3's Nefarious Tropy are from the second session of working on the character. They're dated February 12 1998. The biggest difference this time around is the nature of his time travelling contraption. I added a lot of detail that resembles the gears and mechanisms of clocks including a cuckoo clock at the lower right side of his machine. Also there's been added a pumping device on the back of it whereby the pistons are connected to each other through joint-like bearings.

The next phase of the development of N Tropy was to make some dimensional sense of what was taking shape. These drawings are dated February 12 1998. They were created at Naughty Dog as I was working in the top floor corner conference room at the main office structure at Universal Studios. Those days were happy times!

The paraphernalia on his body machine was over the top for the original PlayStation console. I was thinking that it could be created as a texture in Photoshop and then placed over the polygon structure of the modeled character. The pistons were over complex as well with elements that operated as flexible joints at the top. You can see a little schematic I doodled on the back view. I opted to keep the exhaust pipes.

Dated February 19 1998 these drawings are the last batch from the development of Dr Nefarious Tropy from Crash 3. It took a while but I nailed the look and feel of the character after a lot of fun exploring the best way to visually define him. The body machinery has been simplified with the elimination of most of the gear work. The four smaller pistons are now two large ones. The exhaust pipes have been reduced to one and the time piece takes up most of the device. I followed up with a smaller full body sketch for the modelers at Naughty Dog along with back views as well. Hope you've enjoyed these entries and that they've given you a better look into the development of the Crash Bandicoot franchise.