Spyro going to the movies!

The Hollywood Reporter, Variety and many other entertainment media news outlets have reported that the popular video game character "Spyro the Dragon" will be heading to the big screen as a feature animated film. Here's a link to the announcement on Variety's site:

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117974762.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

I designed and developed Spyro for Insomniac Games and Universal Studios in early 1997. Needless to say, I'm happy to see the character make it all the way to the top of the animation market. The Spyro video game franchise has had more than $500 million in sales. The character is one of the most widely recognized video game personalities in the world. Here's a sketch I created of Spyro as a class demonstration in 2002. I used black line, color markers and some coloring pencil.

At the Academy we emphasize the importance of a marquis character or characters in the establishment of a character based franchise in animation and Spyro has turned out to be a wonderful example of that lesson.

The original development drawings of Spyro the Dragon have been online since 2004 in a presentation hosted by the school. This presentation has had continuous virtually non stop traffic since then with no promotion or advertising behind it, a testament to the popularity of Spyro and perhaps the educational value of the body of work. To view the Spyro presentation follow this link:

http://www.theanimationacademy.com/spyroindex.htm

The Animation Academy is a world leader in the subject of character design training and intellectual property development. Insomniac Games enrolled their production crew into our program in 1998 early in the Academy's history. The Animation Academy has been influential in the animation industry on many levels.

Spyro is scheduled to be released sometime in 2009. Here's to hoping that the script is strong, the production values are high, and the film proves to be as succesful as the video games.