Spanish WC3 Art Mystery Solved

Several years ago we spotted a Spanish magazine that had a bizarre variant of the Wing Commander 3 cover in its review. At the time we wondered what would possess them to create such an odd photoshop. Then it started to appear in a few other places, which just deepened the mystery. And now we have a better clue about what happened! It was apparently a legitimate pre-visualization made before the final cover art, and it was circulated in limited fashion to certain regions like Spain before the box cover everyone knows and loves came to be. Here's LOAF with more:

Folks, I owe a Spanish magazine an apology. They did NOT make their own Wing Commander III box... because here it is again in the digital catalog included with the demo. In fact, what we're looking at was the actual comp that preceded the final painting!

Commercial art has four phases: sketch, layout, comp and finish. This is likely the comp, which is the penultimate step where it is mocked up to show the intended final work. This would've been distributed to stakeholders for approval, final notes, etc. before the artist painted the full sized piece... and (depending on those approvals) they're often used as placeholders in marketing material! But it's very interesting that this one shows up so very rarely (or at least has never been noticed).