Thoughts on the reformed Changeling Designs

[LumenNightlight 40]

Hope this is the right board to post. I'm currently in the process of making my Ponysona, who is a completely new Changeling morph. Like most people I find there is more to criticise than to like about the reformed designs, which is why I wanted to see for myself if I could do better (also because I wanted to separate him from the hive because I really hated how that was handled in the later seasons, but that's a topic for a later thread). That's all taking a bit longer than expected, so in the meantime I wanted to share my own thoughts and see what you guys have to say.

I'll start of with what I liked because I believe a lot of effort has been put into them, and it would be unfair to discount all of that.
Most of the redesigns I see floating around the community seem to take issues with the colours, personally I think they're fine. The pastel tones help to stylistically separate them from other species and communicate nature and optimism. It's also cool to see more complementary palettes, which MLP seems to have a strange aversion to. For most of the regular Changelings that works perfectly fine, the limited colours are actually a necessity considering how busy their designs get. My sole complaint in this category is Thorax. They probably intended him to be more colourful, to differentiate him or highlight his leadership status, similar to Celestia. For Celestia and even RD this works because we see the rainbow as one unit. Thorax on the other hand has his colours seemingly randomly dispersed throughout his body. Poor guy looks like some kid went to town on a colouring page of him.
Second is the shape language, which is the strongest aspect of the redesign for me. We have exchanged the brittle shapes from the previous form for sturdier and more dependable ones. Not only does this highlight that they have changed for the better, but also makes them look satiated (recall that they were always starving before that). It also perfectly symbolizes their new ideology, going from an unstable dictatorship to a new system founded on trust and mutual support. The cherry on top is that they kept some of their literal edginess, which to me is the essence of what a changeling is. Preserving that makes them more authentic, as it demonstrates that they have not completely renounced who they are.
Finally, I have to appreciate that they gave all of them some unique characteristics. From this we can extrapolate that many of them actually repressed their individuality under Chrysalis or are at least comfortable enough to explore it now. Previously, the Changelings were a uniform horde, and it's cool that we`re trying to subvert that. My only nitpick is the loss of any hair or differentiating tail fashion for that matter. Hair is a powerful means of character expression and the insect world is so much fuzzier than many people realize. Although to be absolutely fair even furred and feathered species don't have that much diversity in hairstyles. Because only the pony master-race is afforded the freedom of personal expression.

Didn't have anywhere to fit this in the previous sections, but hiding the wings under the elytron (wing cover) was a great idea.

Now for the parts that I don't like, which as stated in the introduction, outweigh the positive aspects for me.

Starting off: the new designs are unique, but they are not recognizable. They don't pop, they're just kinda there. What is really missing here is a theme that ties everything together coherently. Certain body parts like the gems on their chest plate seem discordant and without any real purpose. Flowers or a general nature theme, which I believe is what they were trying for, would have gone a long way in helping the design stick. It would have worked great symbolically, since the previous designs look like and canonically came from rotting plant material. My best guess is that they tried too hard to separate them from the Breezies. Many of the obvious choices for design inspiration like ladybugs, butterflies and bees were missed and not wanting two races of colourful flower pixie horses seems to be the only logical explanation here. IMO a really bad call, since the most obvious choices are usually the best when it comes to design, since they ensure readability (also making them fairy ponies would have probably sold a lot more toys). Their primary source of inspiration seem to be beetles, which does not constitute a solid theme, arbitrarily restricts possibilities and is hard to read. Perhaps this all wouldn't be so bad if the design they were contested with, that being the old one, wasn't so great and iconic.
This flows into my previous point, but I'm really disappointed they didn't do anything clever either in reference to the old designs or their insectoid nature. Maybe I just have too much useless bug facts crammed into my already narrow brain, but i feel like a whole orchard of low-hanging fruit was missed here. Obvious stuff like patching the holes, giving them a rhinoceros beetle horn, giving them leaf-like wings or hair, I could go on but all of these I'm already working into my OC and a redesign of Thorax and Chrissy. It's also puzzling to see why they continued some design elements, like the 3 stripes on the chest. In the old design they were meant to imply a ribcage poking through, it made them looked starved off and almost like a rotting corpse. So why are we preserving it here? Also, I have nowhere else to add this, but I'm disappointed they didn't make Thorax a visually distinct, separate cast. The only thing separating him are his boring ugly horns and strange colouring decisions. Nothing cool to pair with Chrysalis, nothing cool period. Maybe that was the intention, to show that he is down with his subjects and an approachable leader. This, although beautiful and poetic, is extremely boring and unfun. Also weird, because I don't recall him winning any elections, and if he took Embers advice to heart he probably rules by force anyway. If he's a dictator already they could`ve at the very least made him a hot dictator. 
Lastly, and again this could have still been part of the first section, they aren't fun to sketch or doodle. This metric is a much harder to hold fast than my previous points. It's like their missing some more transient property of what constitutes a design. Maybe this is the culmination of all that I've brought up this far, everything working together like some elements of disharmony to produce a forgettable design, that, worst of all, does nothing more than it has to.

Like the first section I have one last thing that fit nowhere else. Why is Thorax named after a body part he does not have? Asking for extremely accurate insect anatomy is dumb, again I value sketchability and the style of the show is supposed to be reminiscent of childrens drawings, but this one just infuriates me because they specifically drew attention to it. The solution could not be more simple, all they need to add is a single line to give them three-segmented bodies. Worst of all I can`t even pass this off as valid criticism, because of how insignificant and nitpicky it is. 

 

Thanks if you`ve read this all the way through. Promise I will read your nerdy rants on this thread as well  (if you have any of course).

 

 

 

[Snow 8,835]

I myself and not a huge fan of the reformed changeling design and honestly, most people just use the old changeling design for their characters even if they are good, yes it may be considered a little removed from the most up-to-date lore but I certainly won’t object on those grounds. The more iconic original changelings just look better.