• Posted August 23rd, 2012 at 21:22 EDT by Kyle Prahl
• 1 Comments

Fans of Insomniac's quintessential space-faring buddies are no doubt eagerly awaiting next week's release of the Ratchet & Clank HD Collection. There's more Lombax love coming later this year in the form of Ratchet & Clank: Full Frontal Assault (Q-Force in Europe), but Insomniac has served up an early platter of awesome for Ratchet fans.

Posted yesterday on the official PlayStation Blog, never-before-seen concept art of Ratchet, Clank, and the worlds they would go on to explore gives us an interesting glimpse at how the characters took shape over time and whose back we could have been staring at during our galactic adventures.

As you can see, Ratchet started off as a somewhat plump creature, but elements of this original design - including three-toed feet and pointy ears - were kept through further iteration. On the other hand, the first concept for Clank barely resembles the robot backpack we love; he's not even a robot!

Take a look at a few early world designs below, and hit up the official Insomniac blog for the full set. Let us know what you think of these concept pieces in the comments below, and stay tuned to PSU.com for our thoughts on the Ratchet & Clank HD Collection and Full Frontal Assault.