Unused Concepts

During the creation of On the Backs of Dragons, Shawn came up with a lot of things that were either rough drafts of what ended up in the book, or ideas that would end up scrapped. Rather than let them go totally to waste, I thought I'd share some of them here for kicks. There is much more where this came from - hope you enjoy!

Early concept drawing of Akari "on the back of a dragon." It just works on so many levels! ;)

 The logo looks pretty sharp here, but the color scheme just didn't feel quite right to me. So we went a little more plain with just black and white.

 

 

 

Early concept by Shawn when I was still in the throes of writing. A scene like this never materialized.

I rather like the sun shining like that - this was a rough draft of a drawing from the finished book.

Another rough draft of the final battle.

Early sketches of possible poses for Chupwah the Sasquatch.

Old Cyclops having a rat dinner. I bet it tastes like chicken. I love the abstractness of the tail.

Early idea for a drawing of the three dragons getting ready to enter the Dragon Council.

Early concept drawing of the Cyclops, with his filed-down horn.

Early drawing of the Dragon council; a final draft appears in the book. I love the concept of the dragons having different looks, which is something I should have touched on more in the text -you've got one here with cow horns, some with hair, etc.

Early concept of an Azorian soldier. Shawn paid tribute to Boba Fett in this one - but if you are a Disney lawyer, I want to reiterate we did not use this one in the book.

Drawing of Matthias, the old friend of Eston. As I describe him, he is someone who predicts the worst and takes a perverse sense of pleasure in being proven right - but he doesn't mean any harm by it...

Another early concept drawing, this time we've got the dragon digging his claws into the wall to stay in the air, which is closer to the text.