…aesthetics? I guess? After the movie came out, they freshened up the designs of the characters on the show to reflect the new design from the film, and that’s where his pointy ears first showed up:
I’m just gonna go on a limb and say it was just a stylistic choice to make him look a little more evil and bring in some more angles (and I’m sure a certain individual here on Tumblr could further elucidate if he was so inclined to! :D), but… ick. I’m personally not a big fan of the choice. It’s a little less extreme in the movie than in the show where it makes him look more like a goblin than a chimp. And I think they ended up kind of making his face a little more narrow for the show, too, so he kind of looked…
…icky. Bleh.
I dunno. I was glad that for The PPG Rule!!! they went back to his original design with his rounded ears (and I was happy they did it for the reboot too… even though the rest of the design is lacking) ‘cause he’s not JUST a super serious evil angular villain. He’s gotta be able to look goofy and chimpy too! He’s our little antihero!
Many times designs evolve without it being a conscious decision. We draw these characters over and over again on a daily basis and as that happens you start to develop a shorthand to get them down on the page as fast as possible. Proportions change, angles sharpen, details simplify. Many times on a show the way you started out drawing a character is not how you ultimately end up drawing a character. All cartoon characters evolve (or in some cases devolve) as multiple artists put them through their paces on the page. Just look at how The Simpsons started out. So from time to time you look back at your initial model sheets and realize that the current method for drawing a character does not match up with those early methods. So, good or bad you simply update the models to reflect the current place you head and drawing hand is at at the time.
