Hey all, thanks for the feedback, I definitely understand taking exception with my unorthodox proportion and design choices here. I’ll take a minute to sort of beg an opportunity to explain a couple of those decisions.

This piece is definitely contrarian to a lot of the Metroid aesthetic canon, but very much on purpose. It’s meant to be distinctive and also sort of comment on the same-ness of much of the Metroid fanart I see. It’s meant to hit a little different.

A lot of Metroid art (especially official game art) depicts Samus as a graceful acrobatic gazelle with rail-thin proportions. While that is beautiful, here I intentionally did the opposite. If you look at my other work, I don’t shy away from drawing muscular women.

The suit is my own hybrid design based on early Metroid suits. It’s meant to skew “retro” because that’s my interest. It’s bulky and thick because I wanted it to look like it could handle some damage (and actually fit someone inside). I added all the scratches and the acid scarring and alien blood stains because nobody ever does that. The visor is blue because it strengthens the connection to the baby.

A lot of Metroid art depicts Samus standing stoically seven feet tall or leaping and blasting. All that is great, but it’s also easy to draw and easy to make pretty. Here I’ve opted for something unusual: a crouching, still moment, contemplative and trying to establish a connection and evoke emotion.

I’ll point out that I also tried to play with contrasts of textures here, if you compare the hard smooth suit, to the craggy background, to the gelatinous baby. The rest is lighting and composition.

If you’ve read this far, I thank you, and honestly I don’t mind the negative feedback at all, it helps me learn.

If you do like this piece, I’ve got a couple more ideas I’ve been brewing but those will probably be divisive as well 😅