I think artistic freedom and all that is fine.
But you know, there's a limit to everything...

What's your concern with this picture?

Radioactive said:
What's your concern with this picture?

The character, mostly.
More precisely the added flesh --- there's quite a bit of that here.
This is like 2x Chaika.
The light novel explicitly underlines the fragile silhouette of hers. ;D

It's how this artists draws his/her characters. Nothing to do with artistic freedom as all artists settle on a preferred artistic style.

houtengeki's style just doesn't fit chaika_trabant. It's far from the only case on this site where that sort of thing's happened. In fact, there are plenty of cases way worse than this (e.g. much anything by mogudan doesn't even come close to fitting any character that he draws if you compare it to the official artwork). Sure, it's nice when the artist's style fits the character, but artists don't tend to avoid drawing a character just because their style is drastically different from that of the official artwork.

This particular image is definitely far from the best in terms of how closely it matches with the official artwork, but it's also far from the worst. If you don't like it when an artist's style differs significantly from the original artwork, then just ignore the image.

Like Radio said artist's don't have to draw like the original art.

The artist might have gotten inspired from the book or series or he might have just liked Chaika's character design. Either way he liked something about the source material and then wanted to do something with it. He then makes an artwork based of off it that fits his own artistic vision. I think this same principle applies to a lot of fan art.

Anyway, as cliché as it sounds, the source material will stay the same. Nothing is harmed. If you want to see art like the original nothing will beat the original anyway.

spoiler

Radioactive said:
It's how this artists draws his/her characters. Nothing to do with artistic freedom as all artists settle on a preferred artistic style.

I think that is what artistic freedom is all about.

And thanks to Kalessin and Kawaiideath for stating the obvious --- everyone really needs that.

Anyway, I did not mean to be taken literally, but only to point to the obvious discrepancy present in this pic.
I found it quite hilarious, actually, knowing the original character.
Apologies for the misunderstanding, though?