Art and Design by Ernie Wood

Spyro the Dragon Vinyl

Since I have been a Spyro fan since I was 6 years old, getting to do the artwork and design for this project truly feels like my magnum opus—characters and styles that have played part in my own as an adult, with oodles of color and incorporating such a large amount of playfulness—I could not ask for anything more with the creative freedom and trust here.

Before starting the final linework of the jacket I had to start a spreadsheet of every character and fodder type in all 3 games because I kept losing track of who was already on there! Once the front spread was entirely finished I mirrored it and began redrawing everything but from behind. My desktop was COVERED in character butts that I screenshotted from an emulator so I had proper reference. Even now when I look at it I cannot believe I made this work and saw my concept through.

Outside spread for the gatefold jacket
Inside spread for the gatefold jacket
Above: Initial sketch
Below: Each center label, which also followed the theme of the jacket. The A, C, and E sides had the fronts of characters and the opposite sides were the backs.
The entire package is housed in a yoga-pant-like fabric scale bag with screenprinted wordmark.
Because of all the effort put into the artwork on the jacket, my client and I didn’t want to just cover a big chunk of it up with a tracklist. To get around this issue, we printed the tracklist on a banner inspired by those found in Ripto’s Rage and allowed people to physically attach it