Ahhhh, I'm so sorry this took so long! Got a little caught up in art fight prep! So! Let me explain my thought process a little bit! I wanted to keep the general colors and shapes used for the original design, but I wasn't a super huge fan of the idea of a totally random small pattern, because those are really hard to draw over and over again and have look good every time (consistency is also a big thing for me,,) So looking closely, I saw the base color of the original design was a pink with white/a light pink stippled over it, which made me decide to make the base color pink and continue eith the use of round shape and patterns in a lighter pink, but in such a way that could be more consistently drawn! As mentioned when I initially commented, I kind of thought that the string of pearls and (what I'm now assuming was intended to be a bow after looking at the other entries, my b akfnskd) looked like it was supposed to be a sort of segmented fish tail (like gyrados from pokemon almost!) So between that and the kind of longer proportions of the neck and the use of pearls, my brain kind of made rhe association to eastern dragons and their water and Pearl associations Which kind of lead into A little more of like,,, a dragon cat? I didn't want to forsake the original intentions of the species design,, And thus A silly little guy I present to you