>>31903296The conceptual references are modular. You can take out any one of them and the rest stand on their own as the same references. You don't need to have lost your memory, be white and furry, look like a mountain, and leave yeti prints to reference a yeti. Can do three, two, or even one of those and it still comes across. So the features that reference things like having lost memory can be taken out without losing the main concept. Maybe they did understand it, maybe not, it doesn't matter because it's of tertiary importance to the concept (which is maybe why they thought it acceptable to remove, as opposed to your suggestion that they don't understand it). Still has big claws that look as much like boxing mits in the new design as the print makers in the old design, so that concept was never even lost.
Slight modification when it evolving is not a bad thing... Grimer-Muk, Ponyta/Papidash, many others, don't even change, and they're attractive designs. But the neat thing is, those lines evolve in more than just the visual aspect... Muk is different than Grimer, but we don't need big angry eyebrows, claws, and sharp teeth to know that... it's subtler, implied, observed in behavior (this is one of the things that makes the evolution less kindergarten-level inference tier - like if crabrawler evolved into crabominable without yeti-print makers... but instead did what I suggested...it's more incorporated into the pokemon's character, and less blatant).
>how to make it look like an oafIt doesn't need to look like an oaf. It can be implied in it's behavior/attitude.
>first half just a pointless waffleEvery design of everything ever goes through multiple rounds of revision. That's not pointless, it's me trying to prompt you to rhetorically examine why rejecting the first design because it doesn't include every reference you want it to is close-minded.
>how is it any less pop-culture?Yetis living in caves isn't a pop-culture meme. Yetis leaving footprints is.
