(this question was ported over from curiouscat)

i already like my characters the way they are, because they were designed to my specific preferences, aesthetically and fetishistically. i view character designs, in general, as expressions of the designer's aesthetics, carved from specific concepts/themes--they may not always be polished to a mirror sheen, and they especially won't always be to MY tastes, but i can only assume they are somehow beloved by their creator(s), because the alternative saddens me.

i understand character redesigns are a simple and fun design exercise for many, but as someone who is extraordinarily fussy about designwork and media, i'm not especially interested in seeing redesigns of my own characters. not from strangers, and not even from friends. i make what i want to see, above all else, so seeing someone skew what i want to see to their own preferences, instead, is likely to make me feel... not great. it's not like i'm going to stop anyone from making redesigns, though, because people can draw whatever they want. i would just prefer not to see it.

i've admittedly had the inclination to tweak designs of other characters, but i've only ever followed through with it for "canon" characters, where it's much less likely for my depiction to reach the original designer(s). i also don't really enjoy the concept of publicly touting a redesign of someone else's work as "superior". it can be fun to view different interpretations, and i might even prefer them to the original--but that's someone else's art that they made, and art is highly subjective. i don't believe in art being "objectively" good or bad. i don't believe in a particular person's preferences or fetishes being "better", including my own. someone who rigorously studied anatomy for decades doesn't always make more interesting art than an eight year old with some colored pencils. the former may be more "accurate", which is often a trait i seek out, but that isn't necessarily "better".

i think if you're redesigning your own characters, though, the only wrong conclusion to arrive at is one that doesn't satisfy you, personally. i definitely have some characters that feel like they need endless revisions...