test sketches for a redesign of bonsai!

you may remember not to long ago that i was having some frustrations with bonsai’s design. All in all i finally came down to the fact that his design was fucking boring as shit. Like, the idea of it was something i liked but in execution it just came off as the only interesting thing about him being the bonsai-afro he’s got going on

in comparison to the world of cross dimension’s characters he just doesn’t stick out very much. Part of that was always supposed to be part of the joke behind his personality; him being the more stoic and reserved character in a cast of obnoxious vagabonds. What began eating at me though was that i seemed to mistake “reserved” with “boring” and that seemed to really leak into his design.

his body type wasn’t really that dynamic either; like not that him previously having a fit body type was a problem but most of the cast is already “body of attractive protagonist” style, so i figured giving him a bit of pudge would at least make his design not melt into the background.

i also did some tweaks to his face/expressions. I don’t want Bonsai being a reserved sort of character in personality to mean that he doesn’t make any expressions ever. Especially with my habit of loving to draw expressions at their most dramatic (or at their most eyebrow-exaggerating-est), i couldn’t really keep the old beady-eyed boring face structure

still gonna work with this design but i like it a lot better. I’m surprised i’m going with it so quickly especially given most design changes i make to characters i’ve had for so long are usually mulled over for a good few weeks

yeh