#059 - Arcanine

Ah, Arcanine. The poor unfortunate replace by Moltres. I once again find myself writing a critique.

Vision: I'm not sure what happened here. Almost all the colors are off except the light fur color. Due to this, much of the fur design is muddled and hard to make out. Before coming to this conclusion I asked myself if my reaction was simply due to this color scheme never being used before. Sadly, I came to the conclusion that the color scheme is just a bad choice. The rust- and mahogany-like shades simply don't work. Also, the nose looks funny. It would contrast less with the original, lighter colors.

Originality: If the colors had worked as something different, I would have bumped this score up. Still, since this work is a sprite-made-real, I can't award high points for it. You know my reaction by now.

Technique: Perfect again. Colors or not, everything is in the right spot and lines up. I especially like that the dithering used for the shadow one the mane is spot on. It's not easy to do in spriting and from what I know it's not easy to bead.

Impact: I'm torn on this one. Arcanine still has presence but the wow-factor isn't there. A 4 or 5 would have been easy to award, but the muddiness makes be scrutinize and scan rather than look in awe. Besides the colors, it's more disappointing with the last pieces popping right out.