ĭuring the story's development, Spyro and Cynder weren't originally intended to fall in love with each other. As soon as it was decided that the Earth element (and its corresponding Guardian Terrador) were to take on the green color, Krome Studios dropped the idea of green fire for Cynder. Ĭynder was intended to breathe green fire in her adult corrupted form to match the sickly, impure nature of the Ape minions who later appear at the Well of Souls. There were about three or four iterations on her design from memory, as Bruno had a strong vision for who Cynder was visually.ĭuring development, Cynder was referred to as 'The Anti-Spyro' and the Apes were known as 'Anti-Spyro Soldiers.' Knowing that they couldn't ship the game with those names in place, Krome Studios ran an internal competition for the final name for the female dragon villain at both Krome and Vivendi Universal (now branded Activision) and after about three weeks, they chose the name Jared Pullen called the black dragon: Cynder. The development team later went on to call Cynder a 'Midnight Dragon,' owing to this Gothic nature, and all the design work was handled by Bruno. The platinum jewelry was evident as a personal touch for the 'evil' version of Cynder and served to signify her as both feminine and regal, but also gave the impressions of servitude, as if the decoration about her throat was less a necklace and more a manacle, indicating her enslavement to Malefor's thrall. But pretty soon, Bruno was exploring Gothic overtones in keeping with the visual cues of Concurrent Skies, the environment that Cynder was first encountered in. They used the villainess's reference in terms of her lithe, sinuous form, which they adopted for Cynder's overall body structure. Bruno Rime, Cynder's character designer and art lead of the project in Krome Studios, determined that this villain be female and a black dragon, as the previous dragon villain in the earlier Spyro titles ( Red) was generally red coloured.įor both Bruno Rime and Jared Pullen, another artist who worked on A New Beginning, from the get go presence was most important, and the black dragon Maleficent from the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty had that in spades. The story for the first installment of the trilogy, A New Beginning, called for 'a powerful and shadowy dark dragon' to be Spyro's nemesis, beyond that no specification was given and the starting point was very loose.

However, they also felt as if she had been a part of the Spyro mythology for quite some time. 5.3 The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the DragonĬynder was one of the rare opportunities for Krome Studios to create a female villain character in The Legend of Spyro series that was both unique and fresh design wise.5.2 The Legend of Spyro: The Eternal Night.5.1 The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning.4.1 Enhanced Abilities under Malefor's Corruption.

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