Time for a heartbreaking moment for me.

Everything below the head works tremendously well - no complaints with the body, legs, tails...ahem...fluffy chest - all of it work great. However, this fusion in particular was not working in the facial department. Her face looked much weirder in the sketch, almost looked like something out of Looney Tunes. I spent an entire day just playing around with the head and face to get it looking acceptable. I admitted defeat after spending way too many hours getting her to look NOT uncanny and went with the first sign of her looking passable and this is the result.

In my mind, swimmer x otter makes perfect sense. Possibly the pose I chose worked against me cuz Floatzel is usually not seen head-on. Maybe with a lot more practice leading up to her I could have saved it.

In the end, I wanted something much better than this and it unfortunately did not pan out. This is reflected in the feedback I received which ranked her pretty low with a lot of people (though a small percentage ranked them among their favorites).

I believe I can salvage some original design out of this, but that face needs heavy reworking.