Chapter 1: The Beginning

This is a sub-page of Prerelease:Deltarune/Concept Art.

Characters#

Ralsei#

Overworld Sprite Sketches#

Concept art of Ralsei's overworld sprites drawn by Temmie Chang. The symbol on Ralsei's robe is an upside down spade instead of a heart seen in his overworld sprites, indicating some relation to the Spade King. Most of Ralsei's overworld sprites (and his dancing sprites during the Sweet Cap'n Cakes fight) in Chapter 2 would switch over to the inverted spade design.

Battle Sprite Sketches#

Concept art of Ralsei's in-battle sprites drawn by Toby Fox. Ralsei's robe is blank here, but the idea of him hiding his face with the shadow from his hat was already present by this point.
The text on the image reads as follows:

Temmie art of Ralsei's battle entrance.

Lancer#

Lancer was the first major character to be designed by kanotynes. He, along with the other Chapter 1 Dark World NPCs, came from a 52 playing card deck that was created for design class way back in March 2012. A scratchpad of sprites for Lancer was later done, illustrated by both Toby and Temmie. In the 6th anniversary livestream, Toby states that he liked the sprites made by Temmie, but wanted to change them up a bit to make Lancer look more round and chaotic, reflecting his character. Among these poses are some unseen sprites of Lancer posing and jumping, likely for a cutscene of some sort. The "handsome" face Lancer makes in the second image was inspired by the very expressive webcomic Paranatural, says Toby.

Concept art for a design of Lancer's bike, drawn by Kanotynes. Toby says this was part of a bunch of other sketches for bikes made by Kanotynes, but ultimately, the ideas were scrapped in favor of Lancer using a bicycle, as a motorcycle was "too cool" for Lancer.

Jevil#

Concept art for Jevil, shown off by Kanotynes on Tumblr. Kanotynes also designed Spade King, Lancer, Clover, (Head) Hathy, and Rudinn (Rangers).

Locations#

Field of Hopes and Dreams#

Concept art for the field just past the door to the east of Castle Town, depicting the area in a style reminiscent of Paper Mario. Of course, it's unlikely that the game was ever meant to look like this.

NPCs#

Concept drawings of Topchef. The sprite on the bottom is nearly identical to the final's.

A concept for the Jack NPC seen in the overworld. It looks nothing like the final game. The ball next to him, however, is almost exactly the same.

Early concepts of the original Starwalker. Barely anything changed, including the dialogue.

Early drawings for Pizzapants. (Un)fortunately, most of these face sprites were left unused and were never put into Chapter 1 or 2.

Early drawings for the Ice-E mascots outside of Ice-E's P"E"zza. These were converted into sprites, with some added bunny ears for good measure.

Enemies#

Concept art of the scrapped DoomTank. Drawn by Toby Fox. According to Toby, before the idea of both Kris and Ralsei making a blueprint for the Thrash Machine, Susie and Lancer would just make it themselves. It is noted by Toby that this would just be a cardboard cutout with Susie behind it, similar to the "Bowser???" fight in Paper Mario.

An early drawing of a Jigsawry, drawn by Toby Fox. Jigsawry's faces remain largely the same in the final demo, with the exception of the eyes on the "BARRY" sprite looking up in the final sprite.

Concept art for Rabbick, who originally had a caterpillar theme. While the head stayed pretty much the same, besides the eye and mouth shape, the rest of its body was cut off, as the caterpillar theming was removed. The balls were going to move like the balls in Gunstar Heroes, but the complicated nature of this led it to be scrapped. The general caterpillar design was probably reused for the worm NPC elsewhere in the forest.

An early drawing of an enemy based off the trees in the forest. This enemy would've spawned in as either a blob, a dinosaur, or a humanoid, and would have a thought bubble next to them showing what they wanted to be. The player would then have to ACT to change them to their desired form - including the same thing, apparently. This was simplified to the Bloxer enemy, who has a similar but easier to understand gimmick - however, the concept of changing the enemy to their desired form seems to have been reused, at least in part, with the Swatchlings' color-changing gimmick in Chapter 2. The tree puzzle seen in the forest was probably a remnant of this enemy concept.

An early drawing of a Bloxer, once again by Toby. This one illustrates some extra designs for the enemy, along with an NPC variant, though only one would emerge in the final demo. The Kris sprite that can be found several times in this image appears to be an earlier version with differently drawn hands.

A concept for an enemy dubbed "death lord" by Toby. This could be a joke, but Toby said he drew this while thinking of designs for enemies.

Early on in the development of this chapter, Toby asked Temmie for enemy designs. This is what she came up with. Uhhh

Shopkeepers#

Concept art for the shop layout, and a potential shopkeeper. The character in the first drawing was a placeholder (later replaced with Rouxls Kaard), and the other two feature a potential cool cyber robot design... or at least the head of one, anyway.

Cutscenes#

The Legend#

Storyboards for the cutscene that plays while Ralsei recounts the Legend, drawn by Temmie Chang. The notes here confirm that the hooded figure representing "a prince from the dark" is indeed Ralsei... however, the human is NOT labelled Kris. Hmm...