The official Twitter account of the Capcom art team, @Capcom_AWT, shared some concept designs from Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike this morning (Fri 4th November), revealing a bunch of early ideas for characters.
This includes an assassin, a ninja, and a doctor, as well as some more offbeat ideas like a mutated mandrill (that appears similar to Martin from Hirohiko Araki's "Baoh: The Visitor"), an office worker, and a giant robot.
Perhaps the most interesting of all of these, however, is the character simply referred to as "Velociraptor", which is, you guessed it, a dinosaur with claws and teeth.
The sketches are all in pencil and are seemingly the work of legendary illustrator Akira "Akiman" Yasuda who @Capcom_AWT also tagged in the post. Yasuda worked on numerous Street Fighter games in the past, like Super Street Fighter II Turbo and Street Fighter Alpha 3, and served as the character designer on 3rd Strike. He left Capcom in 2003 and has been working as a freelance artist ever since.
Though some of these ideas are inevitably a bit out there, it's fascinating to see these early sketches. We'll be keeping an eye on the @Capcom_AWT account in the future to see what other treasures they share.