You Singed My Cape, Dragon

"You haven't heard the last of me, you little demon! I'll be back, and you'll be sorry. Every last one of you will be sorry!"
"Yeah, I bet."
-Enter the Dragonfly
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And it was a start of a beautiful friendship...

Alternative title for this piece: Ripto's Rage. You can also consider it the aftermath of this picture. Oh, Ripto. Try making enemies with something that doesn't spit fire.

The funny thing about Spyro the Dragon fanart is that once you start, it's kind of hard to stop. It doesn't help that I've been having the biggest urge to replay Ripto's Rage after I did that last picture, so I only have the Spyro club to blame.
Or maybe I'm having nostalgia over one of my first fandoms. I don't know.

Ripto was always a fascinating character to me. His entire personality is basically “take over world, kill dragons”. But somehow the pure maliciousness of his plans makes me feel like he had a really dark backstory with dragons. After Ripto’s Rage, all of his games are basically “let’s see how I can ruin the dragons’ power this time”. He got rid of the dragonflies, he got rid of their ability to breathe fire, he personally stole equipment so that he could teleport between dragon realms…Ripto certainly knows how to be a douche to the dragon race.

I really wish they had explored this more, but Spyro the Dragon was no Crash Bandicoot in terms of character backstory, leaving it purely up to fan speculation unless they brought back Ripto. (hah hah, fat chance of that ever happening, right Activision?)

As for my personal headcanon, I like to think that Ripto always despised the dragons for having innate magical abilities, when little munchkins like him have to work for it. Ripto is a dinosaur, which can be viewed as a wingless, magicless, less mystical version of the dragon. And Ripto is one scrawny dinosaur, unfit for claw-to-claw combat when the dinosaurs in Spyro's games are known for being physical powerhouses. Dragons can breathe fire the moment they're born, while Ripto had to study for years and has to focus what little spark of magic he contains in his body into a scepter to make one measly fireball. (which makes Spyro seem like such a jerk for saying "don't you know magic and dinosaurs don't mix?" in Enter the Dragonfly now that I think about it) That's a lot of material for resentment to blossom and fester in Ripto's body.

And why he tries to conquer the world? Maybe it started out as him thinking that he could be a better ruler than the so-called rulers of the realms the dragons and it slowly slid downhill from there. I can totally see Ripto starting out as a well-intentioned conqueror until little by little power corrupts him.

Sure is fun to torch, though.


As for the picture, this was a work doodle I did. I didn't spend as much time on this as other pieces, but I did do some things here and there that I've never really done in pictures. One of them I've seen other artists do is where there'll be a square background but the characters are poking out of it, and the other is that I've seen artists do highlights on the characters that match the flat color background they're in. I tried them both and found them both delightful looking. It was fun to do a little experiment.

I also didn't go overboard on the colored lines like I normally do, and the result kind of has a neat look on its own.

But mainly, I drew this just to see how much I could make Ripto actually look like his species. Snarly little dinosaur's gonna take a finger off.



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Disclaimer: Spyro the Dragon and Ripto both belong to Activision, if I recall. This picture is drawn by me, and so help me, if I see someone repost or reblog this on another site with the signature edited, I'm gonna make the same face Ripto's making here and begin making the signatures more obnoxious. Reblogging's fine, just be sure to give credit.

Done While Listening To: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApkEbh… (I'm in the minority that didn't think this game was that bad, at least if you play the Gamecube or X-Box versions that are a lot less glitchy)