#violet willow

Rainbow University if I got to make it an animated YA comedy. I’m not super satisfied with the lineart but I like it overall!

The rainbow world reboot design mostly aren’t even that different. They just replace the fashion nods with a slight fantasy theme to represent the online show going from a fashion school drama to a straight up fantasy story.

In fact im going to analyse the differences! Because I can!

Rainbow high vs rainbow world

Sunny madison: original=reboot

This is the same outfit. Same outfit in a different font. The difference is entirely in the hairstyle.

And while I honestly do like the reboot hairstyle more? Since it takes a bit after her runway look? It’s not enough for me to consider them separate looks.

My only major complaint is I wish they hadn’t traded the rainbow stripes out for disconnected stars. It unintentionally reads as avoiding imagery that could be read as a pride flag and especially nowadays we don’t need that.

I really wish they’d done something to differentiate the dresses besides just saturating the colour, maybe messing with the length or putting a pattern on the under dress? You can reuse the shape and style just give it a more unique flair!

I like the sun and moon bag though! I’ve always felt like pushing sunny towards a more celestial theming would be really beneficial for her character and while it’s unfortunately been only an accent detailing on her reboot dolls it’s admittedly better than nothing.

Violet willow: original<reboot.

Pleeeeease don’t murder me for this. But violets reboot look clears for me. And I don’t even like her reboot look that much.

That’s how much I genuinely hate violets original look. A bin bag dress would outdo it. The pieces themselves aren’t necessarily bad. It just looks bad all together. It feels weirdly dated for the time these dolls released in.

It especially doesn’t help that her colour palette literally wasn’t designed with this skin tone in mind. The rainbow surprise slime doll she’s based off of having a slightly darker one. You know how I feel towards whitewashing.

Her reboot outfit manages to make itself feel more balanced by working in darker and warmer purples. And chose a less boxy hairstyle.

I do feel like it needed pants though. I can’t visually read her dress actually as a dress it reads as a T-shirt to me which makes her feel half naked.

It’s not perfect. I’ve never been a fan of violets style. But this is an improvement to me. Anything would’ve been.

Jade hunter: original>reboot

This is one I’m conflicted about because I actually really do like her rainbow world outfit. It’s a cute look that holds itself together coherently! I’d love it!

… if it was on literally anyone else. Because I hate how it’s a watering down of jades style. Jade is the more grungy less feminine one. With impressively androgynous outfit pieces for a mass produced fashion doll. And that’s simply not reflected at all in her new look.

I get it’s supposed to be a reference to her runway look not her original core look.

But the runway look made up for the fact it was a more feminine style by having a lot of black and giving her darker more alternative makeup. Pushing it back into being alternative.

The reboot outfit instead pushes a lot of white into it, which softens the whole look up instead of harshening it like the black did with the runway look.

Her makeup is extremely soft and subtle instead of loud and bold like it’d need to be to have this outfit read as alternative.

Like even if they just swapped her reboot skirt for baggy pants would make a world of difference.

So while it’s not a bad outfit? I hate what it’s done to jade.

Ruby Anderson: original=reboot

Like sunny, ruby very much suffers from “that’s the same outfit” issues albeit to a slightly lesser degree.

I do prefer the crimps to the curls. The curls became a quite overused style in the rainbow high lineup very quickly so it tracks that’s one of the things they’d seek out to change to something more unique.

I like the change of carrying the gold up her outfit onto the logo on her shirt. It makes it become a proper accent colour instead of immediately just dragging your attention down to her pants and holding it there.

The only thing she’s really missing to me is some kind of hat. It doesn’t have to be the same kind of hat. I think a beanie like her runway look would be great and actually do a lot to set her apart from her original core look.

I don’t hate her swapping to a skirt as much as I do Jade because she’s always been a bit more feminine. Her original doll even coming with a skirt in its secondary outfit (r.i.p to those) she has the character flexibility for that to make sense.

I’m glad they didn’t try to replicate the scribble pattern. I know it’s apparently a fashion thing but to me it always looked a bit clunky with the shiny gold. Marker scribbles on a design work best in a flat colour not a metallic one.

I do wish they’d modified the tops a bit.

It’s the major contributing aspect to making it feel like the same doll once again, maybe pick a different style of under top? Or gotten rid of the under top all together? I’m not sure what would work but it needs modifications for uniqueness.

Skyler Bradshaw: original=reboot

Skyler is a very easy character to design for.

All you need is blue, denim or both and you’re free to make up the rest as you go.

This also makes her so incredibly boring to me.

I don’t really have an opinion either way. She doesn’t have an individual style she has a preferred fabric. So there’s not much to pull on for discussion. Both do a decent enough job at being exactly what they were trying to be.

I guess I like her reboot make-up more? It has a nicer pop to it. But otherwise I got nothing.

I’d analyse amaya, Bella and poppy too but amaya is a whole post in herself about how a gimmick doll accidentally changed the trajectory of her design forever.

And well unfortunately Bella and poppy never got dolls of their reboot looks. They’re in the show but never got produced. Bella because the whole team seems to have a active vendetta against her and poppy is apparently shelved due to poor sales.

So as their outfits are tied to the show exclusively I’ll save the analysis for my discussion of the show.