#lutari

Neopets OCs - Story of Jade - Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

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It's neopets comic time again! For years now, Lutari Island has been inaccessible on site, and given the following text:

"The mysterious island of Lutari is currently being pummeled by an unusually large storm! Between the whirlpools, water spouts and lightning it has been advised that no Neopets are allowed to visit its shores. Even the sea life seems to be staying away..."

i got the neopet named Lebanne and i LOVE HER SO MUCH 😭

A selection of neopet Art Fight attacks (part one)

I'm not a huge fan of most of this year's April Fools prank being paywalled, but that's beside the point. The idea of bringing back the oldest pet styles possible is pretty funny, though it does bug me that they were charging full price for artwork that doesn't even half a fifth of the effort of the usual pet styles.

Anyway, the big thing that bugs me about these styles is the inconsistency. Some pets can't be reverted to their oldest forms due to copyright issues (or just plain good taste), such as the Macy Gray (Kau), the Mellish (Mynci), or the Bruce Forsyth (...Bruce), which is fine and reasonable.

However, some pets just didn't receive their oldest styles...because? For example, we got the Tatsu for the Eyrie instead of the older Cerpull, the Gelert is not the Polypup but the Buzz is the Fleye, neither the Flotsam or Jetsam are their oldest art, and so on and so forth. Some of these even got gradients slapped on them when they never had them originally. A little consistency is all I ask for!

(Top: oldest art, middle: old but not oldest art, bottom: versions that we got)

Also extremely confusing is that a bunch of pets got "new old" art. This is fair enough for species that were introduced 2004ish or later that had normal "nostalgic" art styles, but for some reason they redrew a few Neopets that already had old art (complete with gradients in some cases!), such as the Blumaroo, Kougra, Moehog, and Techo. Why??? Maybe they thought some of the poses were too similar, but that doesn't explain the new styles looking so drastically different.

(Top: Old art, bottom: what we got)

And finally, I don't feel like the new art captures the old art's spirit well. Here's the main issues:

Several pets have styles with colors that bleed outside of the lineart, something that never happened with actual old pet art. The old pet art was also wobbly but never "scribbly", even at its worst.

Really obvious if you look at the Kougra and Blumaroo examples above, but for some reason the new styles are very "cutesy". The old pet art tended to be really janked up and just kind of weird looking or downright unpleasant

Lineart is too clean. Old lineart often (not always, depended on the artist) had way too many weird extra lines. However, with that said, the lineart was usually pretty "clean". Not any variable line weights either due to being drawn with a mouse

Below I've highlighted the best new styles, but I'm not ranking the original early 2000s artwork because that would, quite frankly, be insane.

Favorite Species:

Pteri: This isn't quite right (no highlight on the beack, blue should have a gradient, not enough finicky pointless little lines for the amount of detail), but what I do think works with this style is that it looks weird and kind of gross. It's the only pet style that feels like it captures the vibe of the early 2000s art, even if the execution's a bit off.

Lutari: Old art often had really screwy proportions, so the Lutari's giant feet and really small weird flat head do feel right. The tail design and markings have also been reduced in a way that makes the regular Lutari a believable "evolution" of this art. I think the eyes are a bit too highlighted and cutesy, but the rest of it is close.

Varwolf: The different-weight lines around the eyes aren't period accurate, but if you look at something like the old Cybunny this feels reasonably close. The proportions are off, the gradients don't make sense (like giving shadows inside of the spots), the anatomy is somewhat accurate but also not really good, etc. Not perfect, but again, reasonably on-point.

Least Favorite Species: