#it annoyed me because I was gonna give said redesign a choker to symbolize something. but then it felt redundant

[hellaverse-critical-confessions]

*cracks knuckles* Get ready for a long ask As an animator/artist myself, I have a lot to say about the character designs. I'm sure you've heard this before, but these characters are not animation friendly. More detail just makes it harder to animate. (While Bee is a notorious example, nearly all of the characters suffer from this) When designing a character for animation, you need to pick and choose the key parts of their design, because you're going to be drawing the same thing over and over. Another thing: The characters have so much freaking red to them. I won't dwell on this for long, but they don't stand out from the background because there's so much freaking red (Another thing that bugs me is that the characters don't look like what the artist wanted them to be like) Ex: Charlie doesn't look like a doll Vaggie barely has a moth resemblance Angel Dust doesn't look like a spider Alastor doesn't look like a deer Niffty doesn't look like a bug or B-movie styled aliens Ozzie doesn't look like a rooster Beelzebub doesn't look like an animal trainer (you would think with all the suits and shit she likes to use, an animal trainer's outfit would be perfect for this)

Another thing: Her characters reuse the same design tropes. Bow ties, suits, fingerless gloves, gold tooth, stick thin figure, top hat, etc I'd excuse it if this was a beginner artist (heck, I used to do this, but eventually learned and grew out of it) but this is a woman in her 30's who graduated art school. TL;DR The designs are bad and hard as heck to animate

Couldn't have said it better myself

I feel like, when Viv sits down to design a new character, her personal preferences come first and everything they're actually supposed to represent second. Sort of tacked onto the final product like "yeah sure that'll do it"

As for the details, if I may add on: not long ago I've studied screencaps of a character from Helluva for redesign purposes. The amount of inconsistencies I came across was surprising! I'm pretty sure he didn't even have an official ref sheet (nor has one been posted to date), but I've heard that even for more prevalent characters the animators only have the most basic turnarounds? Also stuff like Millie's hair and spots tend to be inconsistent. With so much gratuitous/weird detail and apparently lack of proper reference, consistency suffers

Everyone is also very spiky and full of triangles; I'd love a more soft or even square character. Also some different body types... I mean, remember Mimzy from Hazbin? I don't know if Viv does. I wonder if she's still gonna appear at some point. But anyway

On a more positive note, there's a lot of background character designs that I find really cool & enjoyable! Maybe I'll make an appreciation post for them sometime

#confession #you know what also bugs me? somewhat less prevalent than the bow tie. and relatively harmless. but #c h o k e r s #a lot of characters have them. Millie. Loona. Verosika. Angel Dust. Vaggie. Crimini (pretty sure she was retconned but still) #and they're just there... because. no particular reason for it #(except for Loona I suppose. bc spiky dog collar) #it annoyed me because I was gonna give said redesign a choker to symbolize something. but then it felt redundant #also remember when they gave us a green environment for most of the episode where the imps stood out for a change #and then a new character with a wholly green design. and his ass was completely camouflaged for a significant number of scenes #it was almost funny #(but man I sure did NOT enjoy that episode) #helluva boss critical #hazbin hotel critical #helluva critical #hazbin critical #OOPS HAHA FORGOT TO ADD THE TAGS I am silly