A bite of Appleseed fan art

Redesigning someone else's characters, isn't something that I do too often, but while reading Masamune Shirows's Appleseed books I decided to give it a try.  In the fiction, Deunan's GUGES Landmate is built with close quarters combat in mind and while I love how solid and massive that suit looks, to me it seemed bulky and cumbersome when going through doors, turning in confined spaces, etc.  

 Here's the original design

I wanted to see if I could redesign the suit with more of a "westerner's approach" with slimmed down proportions and an updated look.  Looking at it now, I think my design is a bit more practical for its intended CQC abilitities, however by removing some of those large simple shapes, I've lost a bit of that iconic magic.  sigh. Oh well this was a fun experiment non the less...