This is kinda popping off so I hope to see you all at the stream tomorrow. Better yet, if you like Donkey Kong you can just follow me on twitch! Big things are happening. bsky.app/profile/alte...

These image edits, for example, clearly use the redesign (except changing the nostrils), and yet they hew more closely to DK's previous look just from how they make him emote. There's no reason you couldn't do the inverse and animate, say, the Tropical Freeze model to make all the faces on the left.

The point of the SpongeBob comparison is that simply making a character emote differently doesn't make it "a new design" – it takes actual design changes, like your list, to do that. Not changing DK's bulk or ear placement for Bananza wouldn't have interfered at all with what faces he could make.

So you're saying the difference with the brow is the way it moves – the definition of "animation."

Did this particular episode of SpongeBob introduce a brand new design for him, and then instantly abandon it? Or did they just animate the existing design to make his eyelashes extend and wiggle?

And that Battletoads brow is still around, any time they have the brow make that shape. Again, animation and character design are, factually, two different things. If the redesign got rid of the brow altogether and introduced a different way for him to emote facially, THAT would be a design change.

They didn't need to redesign him to animate his brow more expressively. Like, it's fine that they did, but the new design factually isn't more expressive than the old one – the animation work that accompanied its debut is. It's like attributing a game's lack of bugs to it being "well designed."

Hey now.

If you're fishing for gargantuan-sized character statues that'll make Courtney happy, going for K. Rool would, for once, be missing the mark.

Who would win in a fight?

It means you're (rightfully) trying to divert everyone's attention away from your #1 pick.

I am, so none to worry. 😄