Sly Cooper Redesigns: Mask of Dark Earth

Been doodling some Sly redesigns off and on and I figured I would start with my least favorite character(?) of the series to get it out of the way. When thinking about it I realized… this mask is supposed to be this (potentially) ancient Australian mask thing right? Or at least, it’s embodied by an evil spirit that has been guarded for a long time. I would assume the mask would be created by aboriginal/indigenous peoples of Australia. Then… why does it look like a Mardi Gras masquerade ball mask? That’s… uh. Odd.

So I took some extensive artistic liberties and completely redesigned the mask to follow more native art styles of Australia (or at least my brief research of it) which has a lot of pretty dot patterns based on their sand art. I also tried to keep it a bit rough and not perfect or totally symmetrical so it looked more hand-crafted. I also based it off an animal shape-wise because one example I found was really cool and I’m gonna roll with it.