>>42720386Ask yourself whether or not a five-year-old, during his free-time in first-grade is going to be able to accurately scrawl what could be interpreted as [PHARAOH'S DOG] onto a piece of scratch paper. Creatures like Charizard, Pikachu, and Jigglypuff are endearing and easily recognizable to a lot of people because of their general simplicity in design, simple color palettes, and reliance on common shapes which are made unique with only minimal changes (i.e. Charizard is just a generic dragon, but the tail is on fire; Pikachu is just a fat, rectangular mouse, but it has a zig-zag tail; Jigglypuff is a fucking sphere, but it has that little hair tuft). A good analog to pharaoh doggo is perhaps Absol: basically just a dog, but it relies on its head-shape to carry its overall design into a unique aesthetic which can still be easily recognized and replicated.
If you're aiming to make an endearing creature design (particularly for a monster-taming game which is generally aimed at a child audience), you're best off keeping things simple: not too many detail lines; not too many colors in the palettes; mostly based off of easily internalized shapes, each respectively relying on one or two odd-out design choices in order to differentiate it from its base composition pieces. Pharaoh dog does a decent job of being a number of uniquely shaped set pieces mounted on top of a dog, but then those set pieces end up getting extra adornments on top of them. Some of the flaring gold bits might end up being too much for most people to recall off-handedly in an exacting manner, and that's not even speaking of the little line details in the head-dress strands or the original onyx orbs.
tl;dr: Less is more when it comes to making familiar shapes or objects look more "unique." (Now he's got even less gold on the front legs)
