A Spyro fan film, Special Delivery, is a project currently in development by Dessert Monkey, who plans to release the movie later in 2026. This is the first I've heard of the fan film, and after watching animation tests, the first few trailers and the latest one, I became interested in this project and reached out to Dessert Monkey.
1. What made you want to do a Spyro fan film?
Dessert: I actually made a few similar Spyro animations in the past and had so much fun making them, I wanted to do another one. The previous ones were more made on a whim for a community speedrun tournament called ISGP (International Spyro Grand Prix), starting with using a tool called Spyro Scope (made by FranklyGD) to move the in-game camera around, before making more complex ones done using Blender and other community made tools that allow extracting assets from the PS1 Spyro games. I had years of experience with 3D prior so I thought it would be a fun excersise that I thought others would find entertaining, even though they're a little goofy and filled with community in-jokes.
They were mainly me just wanting to add some interesting variety for videos I was editing together for ISGP before I eventually started making more standalone ones like the last one I made, Jar Confusion.
For Special Delivery, I wanted to something a little more unique that wasn't just using preexisting levels and make an animation in a new but famliar setting and do something that leans into exploring new interesting enviromnents, which is one reason why it's about Spyro running around trying delivering a package.
Another reason was to try out Unreal Engine 5's Control Rig that lets you animate directly in-engine, which definately makes things easier. Blender worked well in the past but can be annoying trying to manage multiple assets (character rigs, props, particles, locations, etc.). Unreal has it's pros and cons as well (FPS drops in some areas, props keep dissapparing on occassion, etc.) but it definately excels at making a project like this easier to manage in the long run.
A lot of the animation is mainly improvised and I wasn't really attempting to do much world-building at first, though at some point I needed something to animate/write around (what interesting ways Spyro gets around, implied backstory without having to animate it, etc.) that still felt like it fits with Spyro lore I'm aware of. I'm just someone who's just animating as a fun hobby (and a Spyro fan obviously lol) at the end of the day.
2. What is Special Delivery about?
Dessert: Special Delivery is about what Spyro might be up to when he's not saving the day, seeing where he fit in within the Dragon Realms. It starts with Spyro trying to move some inventory around, despite his size, before eventually assisting an elder who's running behind on delivering packages.
I wanted to do something that wasn't just about him flaming/charging everything in sight (the games easily cover that) and instead go with something more mundane but still interesting for an animation, which eventually developed into taking some elements (portals, different lands/realms, etc.) being utilized in interesting ways that feel like an natural extension of what's seen in Spyro 1. I always thought the Dragon Realms were rarely explored and still comes off as mysterious as you don't really see the dragons do much aside from standing around waiting for the player to talk to them, so wanted to do something with that as well.
3. How long has the film been in production?
Dessert: I initially started writing the script for it around December 2023 (using an interesting software called Causality) and then started work proper around Febuary 2024. I essentially been working on it for around two years on my own, with voice auditions being done around September 2025 when I essentially had all the scenes in place. Aside from polishing, I also made some unique music for the animation itself (first time making music but happy with how it came out) and then had to re-time parts of the animation to account for it. At this point, I'm mainly just wrapping up any minor issues (audio balance, sfx, minor polish) and wrapping up the last few shots of the last scene of the animation. It essentially can be viewed from start to finish at this point.
4. What made you choose the classic PlayStation 1 visuals for the movie?
Dessert: Since I'm mostly doing it on my own, it makes it easier to stick to the classic PS1 style versus trying to mimic something like Reignited. They're much easier to build in that style and probably would of taken fovever if I tried doing something more detailed. It also lets me re-use textures from the PS1 games as that's one thing I'm not really that good at, I'm more experienced on the 3D side of things.
I did make some changes to the character models themselves to help make them more expressive and some changes inflences from other post-PS1 Spyro games. For example, the dragon elders apparently had opposable thumbs in Enter the Dragonfly onward but Spyro never had them until Reignited, which I only noticed once I started making this animation so I thought it made sense to add it for consistancy.
I also took some inspiration from Reignited with some characters wearing accessories of some sort to help tell them apart such as jewerly and ways for them to carry props around. I'm intentionally avoiding dragons wearing clothing though since, well, fire and clothing usually don't mix and tends to be difficult to animate anyway.
5. In the latest trailer, I noticed a lot of unfamiliar faces, including a baby dragon, and more lands and portals to other realms not present in the original games. Is this to add more life and variety to the world of Spyro for the film?
Dessert: Yes, as I mentioned before. There's a lot of info on that I can share.
The baby/young dragons in particular was wanting to add some more variety that wasn't just the dragon elder models and I don't think there's been any dragons around Spyro's age (that I'm aware of) from the Peace Keepers/Magic Crafters/etc. side of the Dragon Realms so I took the oppurtunity to explore that a little bit. I don't do much with them really, though I do try to make a point with an elder usually accompanying a young dragon.
The locations are meant to be still within the Dragon Realms, though that's partly because I'm reusing textures from Spyro 1 to make things easier. When building locations, I tried thinking about how dragons would go about building structures (assuming they did build structures seen in Spyro 1), trying to add details such as upper floors/shelves accessable by flying, intentional use of stone & metal, roof hatches, etc. In a funny way, it kind of gives a fun explanation why Spyro doesn't know how to climb in Spyro 2, dragons probably don't use them lol
To make things more interesting on how Spyro gets around, I thought about how portals could be used in inventive ways, such as transporting vehicles. I made the choice of Spyro getting around by boat so other characters can also be present. You can only fit so many on a balloon and I'd imagine has some use when the dragons might want to transport heavy chests/cargo around.
One particular location is a series of moving floating islands (because magic and Dream Weavers was already doing it so why not) and also plays into being an interesting workaround of the limitation of portals only taking you so far (it's sort of implied in Spyro 2 but don't think it's ever clarified). The idea of the isles is they're meant to be a travel town of sorts that Spyro goes through on their way to deliver the package, but with the catch that the portals don't stay on all the time due to the islands moving around. It's mainly just a way to keep things interesting, with the stakes of the package needing to be delivered in a timely fashion.
The isles is probably the most difficult one to think of ideas for, but I eventually went with the idea of it sort of being under construction in some areas to sort of justify why there's some non-descript building/structures placed around.
The last area seen near the end of the short is meant to be another area in Magic Crafters, with a similar landing area. With it being more mountian theme, I thought about what a living space would look like and went with the idea of an "apartment/hotel" with a hollowed out mountian with a whirlwind in the middle (Spyro has to get up there somehow but could possibly be used for lifting heavy objects too?).
Probably a lot more though than I need to put into it but it gave me a direction to go with and I just had fun with it in general. Creating the locations wasn't what took the longest, animation still takes way longer due to how time consuming it can be, especially with characters with 7+ limbs to deal with.
6. Are there going to be other familiar faces from Spyro 1?
Dessert: When writing the script, I actually wasn't sure who I was going have voice the characters so I tried to keep speaking roles to a minimum. As a result of that, a few of them are original as a way not having to worry about them sound similar to the adult dragons in Spyro 1. Not all of them have names, only the ones that have a lot of screen time or play some part in the plot (Ferran, Luno, Klark).
I try to find ways to organically introduce names of characters/places by having them mentioned or placed on signs in the enviroment where it makes sense to. I think at least one familar dragon is Claude (the purple Beast Maker dragon seen in the trailer) so I guess you can say there are some returning faces in the animation. It's mainly because I didn't bother to change their model much though.
As it's relevant to the question and at least one person asked, Sparx (or any dragonfly for that matter) is not in the animation, partly to just have less things to animate if anything. I actually forgot when I wrote the script so I guess we can say Sparx might be somewhere else when the story takes place.
7. How long is this film?
Dessert: Last I checked, roughly an hour long. The length is partly due to trying to have good pacing to the animation so things don't happen too quickly but it also wound up inflating the runtime of things. Nice thing about computer animation though is that it's easy to extend the length of things without too much extra work, though it also means you have to find a way to fill in that time so interesting things are still happening.
I actually wasn't trying to make a short film, it just kind of just wound up happening after I got the scenes initally made and came back around to adjust things further. If I ever do another animation, I'm probably going go out of my way to make it shorter since it's my first time doing a project of this scale.
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