re: neopets, Have you reviewed the royal styles? not the ones who had pre-conversion poses, but new ones like Bori and Ogrin
(Similar to the Darigan style review I did a while back, this review will only cover the "regal" styles and will only focus on the pets I think got the biggest glow-ups, rather than my favorite designs overall.)
Royal pets suffered pretty badly from customization—while being able to remove the clothes and do cross-paints is nice, a big draw of royal pets used to be that they were anthro and usually had very strong, fun personalities. Many designs just didn't translate to quadrupeds very well, and the resulting designs were very bland overall. Basically, what I'm saying is that this colour definitely needed these styles.
As for the styles themselves, they're pretty good! I like the poses and a lot of them are very expressive. The only real drawback is that the art quality on them isn't very consistent with the old pre-existing artwork, or sometimes old Neopets art in general—some have subtle gradients, some have way too much detail in their designs, and some have too many layers of finicky shading on them. However, most people probably won't notice this, and they still look good overall.
Favorite Style Glow-Ups:
Koi: I already liked the royal Koi's design, but their pet styles look particularly good. The art feels very on-point with the classic Neopets style, and the dynamic poses have a really nice sense of movement (and have the bonus of not having weird hand-fins). I particularly like how the royal girl and royal boy styles are swimming around each other, with the royal girl swimming down and the royal boy swimming up.
Xweetok: The original royal Xweetok designs are just okay at best, and frankly I don't think the style improved them much in that regard. However, they do give them an absolutely delightful personality, with the royal girl sporting a "oh-aren't-you-a-sweet-little-peasant" kind of look and the royal boy doing a pretentious bow. The outfits also look much better due to things like the royal boy's necklace actually being visible.
My only issue (outside of the tails being too long and thin) is that I wish they had adjusted the designs to feel more like old artwork, i.e., simplifying the overly-complex patterns and getting rid of the gradients. They've done those type of changes on other styles, so it's not like there wasn't pretense for it. Still, these look pretty good.
Gnorbu: The Gnorbu's are similar to the royal Xweetoks, in that the designs didn't change that much, but they read much, much better when on anthro pets (for example, being able to see the neck and chest areas that are normally hidden by their manes). They also fix some issues like the crown clipping into the royal boy's ear. Beyond that, however, I really like the haughty expressions and the anatomy, which is both appropriately stocky and works well with the designs (like the female's mane leading perfectly into her chest). Once again, the patterns and shading could've been simplified, but that's not a huge deal.
BONUS: The royal Ogrin styles are going here as a bonus because they blatantly copy/paste many elements from the converted versions, like the royal girl's tail or royal boy's necklace (and yes, they're VERY complex, but see the notes on just simplifying the designs above). However, the poses are very fun, and the trainwreck clothing at least reads a bit better when the pets are anthro. The artist also did a much better job of rendering clothing folds than whoever did the original designs did.
