#those crystal guys benefited a lot by looking intentionally very gaudy imo

[sparrowlucero]

Why don't you like the sea devil design from Legend of the Sea Devils? It looks just like the originals

Unfortunately it's probably my least favorite nuwho imagining of a classic monster, mostly because a lot of it's flaws don't feel like intentional art direction but just a failure to get what the classic one is going for. I think the original (right) was clearly working off of concept art that was referencing animals very closely to attempt to create a natural looking design (as was the case with many of the pertwee era designs), whereas the newer one (left) seems to be working to replicate the original as closely as possible without quite understanding the anatomy or considering how to better realize it with the resources of modern fx:

I think this original is a much more thoughtful creature design in general - I think the eyes look more like a real sea animal, I think the lines in the face look nicer when they're much more subtle, the lower beak is a little narrower which I think looks better. look at, for instance, how comparatively natural the bone structure of it's frill and the slope of the head is.

and you know on top of that I just don't really want to see a 1:1 recreation of the original, even if it had been perfectly replicated; I would really hope the show would take the original design and create a new version of it with modern, more versatile fx. Oh well. (also: as I mentioned earlier, I just flatly don't think it's good looking or even workable fx. There was some sort of public falling out with the big established studio that had been doing practical fx work for the show since 2005, and they brought in a new, much younger studio to do the final season. I absolutely respect their work as artists but unfortunately, I don't really gel with their style and I think that their relative lack of experience - iirc this was their first job - shows with all of their creatures to some degree. It's especially notable here as, to my knowledge, they were working on bad crunch time and ultimately weren't able to get the sea devil head to function as intended. So, you know.)