The release of The Super Mario Bros. Movie has meant that Donkey Kong is somewhat the talk of the town at the moment. While Illumination's take on the character has managed to stick pretty close to the DK that we all know and love, a recent livestream from one of the original Donkey Kong Country artists, Kev Bayliss, has got us feeling nostalgic for the character's classic design.
Going through a selection of his old work on Twitch, Bayliss uncovered some early sketches for Donkey Kong's design where the gorilla was a little chunkier than we are used to seeing today. Bayliss then shared these sketches on Twitter, showing the progression of the design from Shigeru Miyamoto's initial drawing to some firmer ideas that were used to base the eventual 3D model on.
He even proves that each of these sketches is the real deal by smudging the pencil marks on the page — that hurt a little to watch, we won't lie. You can check this out in the following tweet:
While the drawings might have changed a little in the translation from page to game, it is still very cool to see the origins of one of Nintendo's most iconic characters.
In even more DK-related news, an ex-Rare developer has this week explained the origins behind Donkey Kong Country's name, which you can find out more about in our post below.