Lea Leonowicz, senior concept artist at CD Projekt Red, shared the following concept arts for Johnny Silverhand. These concept arts show how Johnny Silverhand looked prior to Keanu Reeves’ involvement.

As we can see, the original version of Johnny Silverhand is really close to the final version. There are obviously some differences, however, you can clearly “see” Johnny Silverhand in these concept arts.

This first iteration of Silverhand had the same long hair, tattoos and body structure. The face was, obviously, different, and he lacked the facial hair (mustache and beard).

To be honest, it would be cool if CDPR could offer this face as a free DLC (or an unlockable). However, this will most likely not happen.

Below you can find all the original concept arts for Johnny Silverhand.

For comparison purposes, here is how he looked in the game.

John Papadopoulos

John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved - and still does - the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the "The Evolution of PC graphics cards." Contact: Email