I've decided to tackle the first Spyro game ever made and reinterpret it as if it were going to have a modern day "live action" (read: hyperrealistically animated) film adaptation. We can all sleep easy knowing this will never happen, right? Right?

I don't think I'm going to make many enemies by saying FUCK THESE GUYS. That is all. But really, I like thieves as characters/NPCs/game objects. They're kinda strange, having unknown/vague canon origins and not looking very much like any other species ingame. Heck, they don't look like they have a species at all. They're little more then scurrying, wide grinned shadows who make fun of you for being too slow to save your infant cousins from them. It cannot be exaggerated how much I wanna say fuck these guys.

Thieves are creepy to me. Because of that, I tried to make them look unsettling, perhaps even a little mysterious. Why are their teeth so big, their eyes so small, their hands so bony and disproportionately large? How willing would I be to hang one of these on my door as a Halloween decoration? My thieves are influenced by spiders, sharks, and old lady dentures, all things that frighten most people.

The thieves were the first character designs I fully rendered, and I did that in a different way then I usually do. As always, their designs are a combination of drawing, painting, and photobashing, but I also implemented 3D modeling into my workflow so as to more quickly and easily simulate lighting. During this time I had discovered monstermash.zone, and it allowed me to create, export, and render quick and dirty models from my concept sketches, thus speeding up my painting process by at least a third. I'd recommend trying it, especially if you're like me: hopeless at 3D modeling by hand.