#Vis dev: Betsy Bauer

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Truly the most important of Archie to exist, this artwork is by Betsy Bauer! Mean look at him, no wonder he was so embarrassed.

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This was also used for one of the netflix thumbnails indicating fantastic taste. Interestingly this also confirms there is a green eye version matching his cat model sheet.

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Rocky Horror but specifically the scene where Frank N Furter brings Rocky to life in the lab. Redesign I did for Betsy Bauer’s Vis Dev class

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Do you want more because:

Artist: Sean Wang (Tanginova) - Source

Artist: Sean Wang (Tanginova) - Source

Artist: Betsy Bauer - Source screenshot from this video

Artist: Betsy Bauer - Source

Artist: Betsy Bauer - Source

Artist: Aaron Loftis - Source

Artist: Yingjue Chen - Source

Artist: Yingjue Chen - Source

Artist: Andy Murray - Source

Artist: Isaac Orloff - Source

Artist: Sean Murray - Source

I might have missed one but I think I got all the public ones.

found some rott concept art for the titans which i love so so so mucj i like it all better than what they went with 😭😭😭

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Skrael Design Path

Rolling onward to the second of these Arcane Order closer looks and this time it's Skrael at the helm! As ever with these it is far from impossible something else will belatedly turn up. Should this occur, wherever it is added will have a [/edit xx/xx/xxxx] which includes a date marker. Just makes it easier to find the “new” thing :)

Given Skrael is often written by many fic writers as He/They, suppose we got some more non-binary wrongs going on. All for a good cause tho, right?

Skrael is unusual of the three in that his design, from what work is public, was cemented pretty early on. Still, Francisco Ruiz Velasco did have his own stab at a bunch of wizards which are nigh impossible to pin down if it was for any of the Arcane Trio specifically or not. This one will very understandably appear in all three as there could well be a Skrael potential here.

Source goes to Linkedin so may require an account.

According to Yingjue Chen who drew the below Ice Wizard designs, Sean Murray did a sketch which the most Skrael looking one is based. It's a pretty low chance of said sketch ever turning up but you never know.

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A coloured version of this very Skrael looking Skrael is also shown in the Art of Wizards panel on the height comparison chart too.

From there comes his final design plus quite literal gesture sketches. These are again by Yingjue Chen!

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Skrael next pops up in the hands of Betsy Bauer for his paint and turn around which much like Bellroc is a reference goldmine. He is no longer on her website but you can check out other things she did for ToA here.

Decided to add a trio of bonuses just for fun. You might have noticed the Order pops up in the Wizards credits sequence though unlike Trollhunters and 3Below, it is not Headless Studios. They were drawn in a similar way though! They are by Alison Donato.

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This is also a great excuse to yet again break out Francisco Ruiz Velasco's Order band poster again! In part due to him only appearing in colour keys for RotT otherwise.

Source goes to Linkedin so may require an account.

Of all the Order for some reason there's a lot of detail for Skrael's staff. Starting off we have the painted concepts by Yingjue Chen which we lack for Bellroc at this time.

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And from theeeere we have a whole bunch from Alison Donato including callouts! The small and texture free Skrael model resized for height comparison purposes will have been made at Leo Sanchez Studios.

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On the more magical front there is a tiny screenshot from the Art of Wizards panel which shows the magic effects for Skrael. It is unknown who the other images including what could be the ice bridge belong to however -

We do have a bigger version of the left image which we know is by Yingjue Chen! Aren’t effects neat?

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[/Edit 13/02/2025] The following was missed due to no obvious note of what it is on the original tweet this version is from and it's being added in now. This is the spell effect combining Bellroc, Skrael and the Green Knight's power into a single shot! It is by Isaac Orloff.

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Poking Rise of the Titans a moment, thanks to Andy Murray we have the glow up eye effect for Skrael. This has been cropped from a larger image for fitting this post reasons only.

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And for fun since we also have it, this is the Arcane Circle for Skrael which is shown on the Ice Titan. The Genesis Seal marker is on the same row as Bellroc so is not shown here. As above it has been cropped for fitting this post reasons only. This time they are by Sean Wang.

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Much like Nari, we do actually know what Skrael's development name: Thule! They're not in the most easy to spot place mind and likely why many have missed it over the years. One of them is in Alison Donato's file names on her website like so:

The other location is on one of the Felix Yang sequences that hasn't been converted from nyoom status yet. In this case, yeah you have to be very lucky to spot it:

It can can be found Here.

When all three posts are up there will be a link here to the other two members. For now it is a half completed placeholder:

Bellroc - Nari - Skrael

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The second part to this Ask, here's all the Krel stuff we have at this current time! Sorry for the delay. System jank mark 3 in a month plus clock change/birthday/mother's day yesterday has done me in.

First up is this poster for 3Below which you might not think much of except...

Yeah Krel's shirt is green for some reason? Given this made it all the way to the poster and one netflix background, his model must have had a last minute change for blue. Very unusual and figured best to include it for the record.

Anyway weirdness aside, the earliest Krel we know about is the artwork in Defenders of Arcadia/3Below credits which uses official Headless studios artwork. This left is screenshot from a youtuber due to not having a screenshot of him handy apart from the ending:

Thanks for that resize tumblr good job.

There is also one other instance from The Animation Magazine. This is spliced together of various assets in the order of:

Francisco Ruiz Velasco - Morando, Fialkov, Coranda and Varvatos Vex

Yingjue Chen - Aja and Krel

Luug - Betsy Bauer

Corgi Luug, Krel, Aja and Vex as an old man however have never shown up anywhere else. It is very possible they are also Headless Studios though they could also be someone else entirely.

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Whatever the case is, Krel pops up again in this paint by Yingjue Chen based on the Headless Studios artwork.

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The last of the human art we have at the moment is this one by John Bell showing him in his room on a skateboard. He is used as a height reference in multiple of his 3Below pieces.

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On the Akiridion side of things, the earliest currently known is this pair by Yingjue Chen. This has been cropped from a larger image for relevance sake.

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After that we have this image from a bunch of sketches she did. The rest were heavily Aja leaning or too difficult to be sure so went with this one since yeah that's Krel. Either way ~weaponry~.

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This one is part of Alfonso Blaas' portfolio and yeah got nothing, absolutely no idea what this was made in relation to whatsoever. Only possibility ever been able to come up with is something to do with hiding their Akiridion forms but even that's, yeah.

This one is another piece by Alfonso Blaas namely a piece of visual development included as hey, Krel's there.

Source for both the above

Moving back to Francisco Ruiz Velasco a moment, he has this piece of key art from Mother's memory. There are quite a bit of various Akiridion tech in his work but going with being 98% sure it's Krel for this post. The hoverboard might be him for example but they have two arms so eeeeeh.

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The last known is this piece of art by Yingjue Chen squirreled on Eli's conspiracy board!

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To finish, Krel actually appeared on the Dreamworks 25 years in a unique model pose that has never shown up on any other marketing material.

There is a lot of Aja specific art dotted about including a second version of the above graphic with just her and a model paint. While artists of course can put in their portfolio's whatever they want/get permission for, there is undoubtedly a heavy Aja leaning going on.

Either way hope this helps and if anything else turns up, will sneak them in.

Also went with this screenshot because these three idiots are chaotic it's great.

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Nari Design Path

We're now on the final of the trio and we're finishing up with Nari! Part of the reason she's last is there is So Much and given smacked straight into the image limit it was the right call. Think she is also a great reminder that there is no "central hub" for finding information scattered across multiple artists with some being lost over time. The only place that is anything like that is the Dreamworks vault, all this is by one dedicated person who despite doing their best can still miss things.

As ever with these it is far from impossible something else will belatedly turn up. Should this occur, wherever it is added will have a [/edit xx/xx/xxxx] which includes a date marker. Just makes it easier to find the “new” thing :)

Much like with Skrael opening with these guys again if for flow reasons this time round. Francisco Ruiz Velasco had his own stab at a bunch of wizards which are nigh impossible to pin down if it was for any of the Arcane Trio specifically or not. This one will very understandably appear in all three as there could well be a Nari potential here for all we know.

Source goes to Linkedin so may require an account.

Next up is Yingjue Chen's initial forest wizard concepts which you may recognise from the Bellroc thread. We've even got some deer ankles going!

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Her next iteration is Nari as we know her for the most part if more "adult" in appearance, longer hair, possible deer ankles and lots of veils.

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The "adult" Nari has popped up one other time namely through Francisco Ruiz Velasco doing his own exploration of the nature wizard and funky magic vines.

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After this it was decided to make Nari "younger" and more childlike in stature though at this point still keeping everything else about her design. Fandom has generally fallen into two camps as either seeing her as a literal child sharing a weird spot with Skrael there or as a small adult. This is in part why the quotation marks are being used. Next to her here is the nature wizard design recast as Bellroc before they went off to a different artist. This is Yingjue Chen again!

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For some reason have the left image entirely on its own and not entirely sure why. Anyway.

On the right is more veil tests that were tried out until it was decided it would be cost prohibitive, a common reason for cape loss in animation. Her hair was shrunk into the snazzy braid for the same reason. Her design would have further tweaks before settling, notably in the legs and how the leaf plates fit together if you compare the above and the below.

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After this we have Nari's paint over a Leo Sanchez Studios model complete with callouts! Thinks ended up being tweaked a little bit more which really shows how iterative the process of concept to final design can be. Bonus is good reference particularly for that braid.

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This is the point where you will see some creative work arounds for the image limit. Prior to his website being changed, Ivan Gozali had a bunch of sketches, some Bellroc sketches and a Jilaire beatboard. The Nari ones are still accessible through instagram if small. These are a smidge bigger though have been grouped into twos because of aforementioned limit.

He does mention a very interesting tidbit however:

Some character studies of Nari. Early in production we didn’t have much to go on. There were several design iterations, we even had several name changes. I was never much of a “concept” artist so please excuse with these off-proportion drawings. I always find joy exploring character behaviours and attitude.

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In addition there was this little animation which is on both instagram and on his tumblr. There he says:

Nari character from Wizards, inspired by a ‘feral boy’ character from Road Warrior, which was a good jumping point, but I’m mostly inspired by @glenkeaneprd Tarzan test.

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Also by one of the storyboarders we have this series of art by Bianca Siercke. Completely non-canon these were part of figuring out her character and no doubt helped the boarders figure her out best for drawing as well.

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This can of course also mean rock fists. Specifically in this case to quote:

"Nari playful personality was especially fun because of how it might effect her fighting style". "This was one of the explorations I did to figure out what kind of magic she might use".

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"This was an exploration of how Nari's magic might change depending on her mood".

Given she can use plants like a telephone according to Aaron, murder hands seem fair even if they were just part of figuring her out.

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"These were explorations trying to find Nari's personality and magic ideas. They're non canon".

This is the last one! Ironically enough the seeds did come back in a sense in the form of her potted plant in Rise of the Titans.

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Decided to add a trio of bonuses just for fun. You might have noticed the Order pops up in the Wizards credits sequence though unlike Trollhunters and 3Below, it is not Headless Studios. They were drawn in a similar way though! They are by Alison Donato.

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Now firmly onto RotT related artwork, these various disguises for Nari are by Betsy Bauer painted over Yingjue Chen's original! Should you so desire you can have chav Nari in your works and point to this as to why.

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Thanks to Andy Murray we have a paint and orthographic turnaround of the chosen Nari in a giant beanie. Gives a good look at the t-posing model as well should you need it.

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This is also a great excuse to yet again break out Francisco Ruiz Velasco's Order band poster again! Some imagery shenaniganry was done purely to ensure this got in here again.

Source goes to Linkedin so may require an account.

Returning to Yingjue Chen a moment, Nari's staff! This and Alison Donato's credits paintings are the only currently known artwork of it. It might not have been used much but she does very much have a stick just like the others.

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In the previous two design paths this is about when the Art of Wizards panel gets pointed to with the really tiny screenshot. In a unique twist to Nari and as a boon when smacked into the image limit, we have the full-sized versions of the very art shown there!

Next to the very tiny Nari is the left most vine.

And beside it is both the "flame" and the beam that will be used to bass boost the Heart of Avalon specifically. The below was originally on Betsy Bauer's website though is no longer available. Why things are saved off :)

Do you recall the green butterflies/moths Nari seemingly produced out of nowhere while at Hex Tech? Well thanks to Isaac Orloff we have their orthographic and their glowy effects!

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Moving onto the RotT spell front, when Betsy Bauer revamped her website it came with some brand new art we hadn't seen previously. Not only does it show her potted plant unfurling and name it as a passion flower, there's an additional view of Nari in her "Fish fear me" hat.

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We have that same flower exploding into a massive vine. Even has a callout specifically to Betsy Bauer's spell effects which is neat! This one is by Sean Wang.

Returning to Andy Murray a moment, we have the glow up eye effect for Nari. While not shown here for image limit reasons, the mind swap between Douxie and Nari effects plus the ripping him outta there is on the same sheet. The one below, which is purely Titan related has been cropped for fitting this post reasons only.

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This is the Arcane Circle for Nari which is shown on the Earth Titan. The Genesis Seal marker is on the same row as Bellroc so is not shown here. As above it has been cropped for fitting this post reasons only. This time they are once again by Sean Wang.

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Sean Wang also has this on her website showing additional effects and the rune usage on Nari specifically. The artwork on the left is from one of Alfonso Blaas' colour keys which shows the Genesis Seals being opened.

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Nearly there now! While mentioned earlier and to fit with the format of the other two posts, one of Nari's in development names was Ilnara which we found out thanks to Bianca Siercke.

To close up on a fun note, Yingjue Chen has a headcanon of "adult" Nari having Excalibur which Schildwand went and cosplayed!

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With the trio now complete, all the link hops between now work! When this is uploaded please allow chance for the links to Nari to be updated on the other posts.

Bellroc - Nari - Skrael

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Very recently, Betsy Bauer updated her portfolio which contained some brand new artwork that has not been seen previously. One of these is Archie fish concepts:

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Big fan of B and F here.

Now this one has been a bit suspicious. While could be completely off the mark, what would become the Hong Kong Trollmarket was at one point underwater. This has only come up once before in the form of this piece by Isaac Orloff below:

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Due to water being a nightmare for budgets at the best of times, it could well be the reason the direction changed though it isn't impossible it was for other reasons. In either case, it is the most logical reason a fishy Archie exists and what a delightful little guy he is too!

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Any concept art of the Gun Robot Megasuit (from Rise of the Titans)?

Ah. That blasted thing.

Yeah you can tell been having fun with it.

Very soon after RotT's release, a Behind the Animation video was released on youtube which is thankfully still accessible. Due to being screenshot will have to put up with my browser protection on the side. It gets shirty when turned off even temporarily despite being a big blatant button in the way. Youtube UI as well due to having to frame skip as they're shown in the worst possible way to screenshot.

Cut here due to the amount of images, there's more below!

Who painted these? Good question nothing was labeled.

[Edit 07/02/2025] Shoutout to past me who correctly guessed one of them was Francisco Ruiz Velasco. Bonus is we can now actually see it properly!

Source will request a Linkedin account.

This one at least Betsy Bauer kindly confirmed it was her artwork when I got into contact with her.

Hate having to be vague but this is one of the long term ARGHs of the franchise. We do know who did the poster at least! Andy Murray thank you for my sanity.

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Probably not what you're expecting Rise of the Titans wise which is all the more reason for them to be known of! Pre twitter actively trying to sell everyone down the gutter and waaay before the current mess, Betsy Bauer uploaded these two Procreate sketches she found in 2022 of what the trolls at the HK Trollmarket might look. Very understandably as things worsened for artists having their work fed to AI slop, she cleared her account. This had a rather unfortunate side effect:

Twitter caches were decaying in less than 12 hours from their previous week

This occurred during the night because timezones

Nobody thought to grab them prior and being 2022 was far later than most fan pages grabbed anything.

This is the preview from discord before the images decayed into nothing. The text can still be seen long as the message isn't touched:

By sheer luck the account holder happened to love them enough to do a fanart sketch of the left one... And had left the artwork in a layer meaning it was unintentionally preserved:

The latter however this was as best the cache had the morning after before that quickly disappeared as well. Even if it's overly small and poor quality, least can see the full body and they won't be lost to time :)

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First thing, just wanted to say this blog is great and all the work you do for it is amazing!

I came here to ask if there’s any concept art for Douxie’s clothes? Specifically the Camelot look, it’s been a bit hard for me to find any good references for the cosplay I’m making, hope you have a great day/night btw!

There is two actually! Two versions of his concept art appearance and his the orthographic which has his front paint included.

Apologises for the teeniness of this, it's a screengrab from the Art of Wizards video. I think there is a larger version of this blowing about somewhere that was screenshot when it was live though not got it to hand.

Then this one is the finalised concept art! Both are by Betsy Bauer.

Tumblr is absolutely going to eat this so do pop it out into a tab, reference wise I prefer the landscape version. This is a full orthographic turnaround thanks to Andy Murray.

It's also thanks to him we have any artwork of Camelot!Zoe too... Got the concept art for his stick too should you ever need it.

Hope these help!

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As Betsy Bauer removed her artwork from twitter because of gestures going on that meant the lorge version of this went with it.

Have at you Jilaire fans.

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Luug design path

Luug is perhaps not the most obvious that there might be some earlier production art of and yet there is actually a little bit out there!

The earliest we have is this character design sheet from Fury Guzzali (The name below is correct! She's come out as Trans since then and in this house we do not deadname) showing how they were figuring out how his mouth should work and how it opens.

He's just a little guy after all.

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The corgi Luug with slightly different eyes also appears with these possibly Headless studios Vex, Aja and Krel so it could be theirs or hers. Been struggling to get conformation on that one. The other artists are Francisco Ruiz Velasco, Yingjue Chen and Betsy Bauer for certain.

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But wait you might be thinking, the final Luug doesn't quite look like that! Well you'd be correct, Betsy Bauer took the regins and polished him up into something a lot more familiar. This is fantastic reference in combination with the earlier version too.

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As part of this thread there was originally two sketches by Bolhem Bouchiba which have been removed due to this news breaking. They do still exist on the source which can be found here unless they decide to remove them.

Luug!

[theslayerbrother]

Cute

As Betsy Bauer removed her artwork from twitter because of gestures going on that meant the lorge version of this went with it.

Have at you Jilaire fans.