Inkscape Pyro
I've come to terms with the belief that most artists, myself included, will look back on their work and think "this was AWFUL! Why did I think this was a good?!" and honestly, I feel that more when viewing the traditional art I've scanned into my computer rather than I do with my artwork from the Inkscape era. I can't explain why that is, but I believe part of it stems from my interest in the cutting room floor and what could have been. With every drawing I finished, my confidence grew, but so did my naivete; oxymoronic as it may seem, I was incredibly close-minded and struggled to alter my designs unless I was heavily inspired or had to make changes out of necessity. Pyro's old design shows this best.
I've explained this more on Electra's entry, but for about two years, Pyro and Electra were women before I changed my mind and decided to balance out the gender ratio of the SPACE characters. When Pyro was female, he wore sportier clothes and had a ponytail, which were the first to go when I switched his gender. I gave him an afro based on Ruby's from Steven Universe and red martial arts outfit loosely based on a gi, and these were choices I stuck with because I was confident with their staying power and struggled to envision what he'd look like without those details. It wasn't until late 2020 and early 2020 that I began questioning these choices, as Pyro was impossible to draw with a hat on and his color palette, though organized, was an eyesore due to its brightness and how much he stood out in comparison to everyone, especially with how dull their palettes were in comparison.
For most of 2020, Pyro was the character I posted about the least on social media, and it wasn't due to insecurities I had with the character; rather, I was trying to make him easier to draw and easier on the eyes going forward. Pyro's debut in my art gallery was May 17th, after the debut of Electra's unofficial redesign and MONTHS after the others were redesigned. His official debut was in silhouette, with no context as to who he was or the kind of character he'd be. His redesign made its debut on June 15th, over a month after the previous piece was completed. He was the last character I redesigned and the character I spent the most time redesigning, but those efforts paid off and I never looked back after that day. His redesign evolved into his modern incarnation, with minor losses and significant gains along the way.
In everyone's entries, I comment about how dull their color palettes were and how saturation worked to their benefit. Pyro was the only character where the opposite was true; his palette NEEDED to be duller, and doing so made him easier on the eyes. His eyes grew more expressive, and he gained a scar through his right eyebrow. His most significant changes were his outfit and hairstyle: I gave him a white gi while experimenting with his outfit, which only served to conflict with the rest of his palette. I replaced his gi with a Wushu-based outfit after my research found those outfits to be more adaptable and fashionable than my initial idea, with more being added to it two months later. Outside of these adjustments, he received a white undershirt with short sleeves, a more complex belt, and a new pair of pants colored differently from his shirt. His other major change was his hair: outside of the hat situation, Pyro's initial hairline didn't make any sense. It would cover his ears, but his bangs stopped just shy of where the hair reached his ears. I had no idea how to interpret it from other angles, and retooling his bangs to keep the both ideas served only to his detriment. His bans also parted in a way that was too similar to Electra's at the time, so I redesigned his bangs altogether to give them more flow similar to Shadow's and Aqua's hairstyles. When this worked in my favor, I condensed his hairstyle to make it easier for him to wear headgear and separate him from the other characters that had thicker hairstyles. His modern hairstyle is still comparible to Electra's, but it makes his modern incarnation look more refined when compared to Electra's. The last and least significant change is that Pyro's eyebrows in his modern incarnation no longer blend in with his hair or skin; they are darker than his hair but brighter than his skin, mainly to highlight the scar running through them.
My biggest takeaway from Pyro's Inkscape era design is that the first idea is not always the best one: It has its charm, of course, but it was inflexible, inexpressive, and unadaptable in addition to being hard on the eyes due to its brightness. I respect this design for what it was and what it accomplished, as Pyro's modern incarnation wouldn't be the same without this version of him, but it had a lot of issues that NEEDED time to fix. Always keep an open mind when designing characters and experimenting with their looks: just because a design looks good doesn't mean that it will age well.