Benny's Evolution

Well I just made a quick but new reference today for Benny Bantam, my retired 1920s boxing 'toon!  He's going to be modeled and rigged in 3D, which opens up a lot of possibilities if I do it right (my first model and rig was.... interesting to say the least... I'm gonna work really hard to make this one turn out the way I want it)!  Real quick, here's the new ref for me to break up and use with Maya:

But the real reason I wanted to make this post was because doing this got me looking at and thinking about the older pictures of Benny!  While his design is pretty much exactly the same, the stylization has changed quite a bit!  Here's the very first (mildly) "polished" verison of Benny from summer 2013:

By winter 2013, when character sheets were due for this original character tournament, he came to look more like this:

Well lots of doodling later and many, many comic pages, it seems that he has evolved into what he looks like in the very first image!  Sadly I think he has lost some of his 20s cartoon stylization, but drawing him so much has led to me understanding his personality a lot more and drawing him probably more accurate to "who he actually is" as a result!  Seeing those old pieces makes me want to use thicker lines though...

Oh and Happy New Year's by the way!  Whoo 2015!