Style Experiment

Another nerdy post... but it does have relevant artwork!
In fact, that's kinda the point of this one. I've been trying to post it for days now... but it's lengthy and I've been rather busy doing insane hours at work @_@ (last post if you care).

Okay so.
While drawing my main character, Miss Tavé Deveaux... the same way I've been drawing her for years.... I discovered she could really use some work. Design-wise.

Granted that there shows my awful drawing skills from early high school. XD But still. Even in her later incarnations, it's just not working. For such an interesting and exotic personality that I've written her to be... her look is suddenly rather boring to me. Not only this, but the look and style I had fallen into rendering her with is pretty bulky and inefficient. Great for illustrating; but if I plan to make this a comic (ie: drawing characters over and over from various angles...), my style needs some streamlining. And not just on a character-by-character basis.

What I am trying to avoid, though, is changing my style completely. People have pointed out that my current style and look is unique, which is awesome. X3 But I really like it as well— I don't want to lose some of my trademark elements, but sadly, there are some problems with certain things.
Now I could sit and pick apart my own art forever (which I will try my best to avoid, lol), but I suppose some examples are in order. Here, have an experimental Tavé.

Before you sit and wonder what's different (beyond the obvious), a lot of my character design knowledge went into this experiment. I do actually claim to draw for animation, so I applied many of these principles in the redesign:

• Simplified anatomy
• More expressive features
• More aesthetic shapes
• Stronger silhouette

As an added challenge, I tried for repetition of shapes in certain elements like her eyes/glasses, eyebrows/hairline (yeah, Tavé has rather thick brows, lol), and quite obviously her hair. The little curly-cue dealy I want to carry into things like her clothing and maybe poses, as it's awesome base a character on a central shape like that. I could see her posture as... swirly. Lol.

I am hoping this is an okay look, however... Because this is still a fantasy comic. It just feels to me that the magic can be lost if it looks too... toony? Hmmm. See now... this is where I need feedback. XD I might cross-post something to this effect in my deviantART journal, since there really isn't much traffic here. <.< *ahem?*

Anyway...
I hope I can keep this up with my crazy working hours, lol. I would really like to draw and experiment more, but I've not had the problem of finding time for it in quite a while, lol.

So stay tuned.

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