Niffty’s design change is one of the most obvious changes on a surface level. Her whole colour palette has shifted pretty significantly, after all. Her face, Niffty’s main focal point, looks particularly different.
So, here’s the deal. New Niffty uses cooler tones to old Niffty’s warm tones.
It’s as simple as that. There are other changes, sure, but those are just simplifications for ease of animating her design. The rather important change is her cooler tones. Now you might look at her design and protest what I’m saying here. She’s all pink, red, and yellow, and those aren’t cool tones!
Well, that is true. But colour is nuanced, and despite red being a warm-toned colour you can still have cool-toned reds and warm-toned reds. And her overall colour palette is significantly less warm-toned than the original. You’ll notice her stark white skin replacing her formerly yellow skin along with far more white in the design, the former burgundy in her design now being a sharp black, and the reds and pinks of her design now being far more muted. Not to mention just how much orange and yellow was cut from the design.
Now, looking at the Wiki, it says she’s Japanese. That’s something I didn’t know from watching the pilot, but it does explain why her skin colour would be changed. Rather than use yellow or stark white however, I’m sure it would’ve been possible to keep a warm-toned character with perhaps brown or tanned skin? Since there are dark-skinned Japanese people.
Since the warm tones weren’t kept, I can only imagine the cool tones were intentional. And here’s the question I pose to you. Why? What does her warm-toned palette versus her cool-toned palette mean to her character?
Her warm tones in the pilot matched her hyperactivity, excitability, liveliness and charm. She quite literally as well as metaphorically lit up a room with her presence, which is how she left such an impression despite having so little screen time in the pilot.
But she also had a capability for coldness and cruelty. And that’s something which I would imagine, based on her new design will be more prominent in the new show.