My take on trying to improve the new Ahri splash art
For better resolution of picture please go into the imgur link and click on it
The newly update
splash art still looked kind of weird to me. So I just repainted it a little bit in photoshop to see if I could improve things in there.
Mainly to make her look more "Ahri like" and adjusted a few things that I thought would make more sense.
Here are some details that I changed in my take
Hair: Increased volume of hair on the back of her head, removed some around the right side of her face. Makes it easier to identify the shape of the skull and direction she's facing.
Face: Changed direction of her pupil and gave her a smirk so that it look like she's luring someone into the wood. Added thicker eye-lines to give her sleepy eye some energy. Adjusted her chin so it doesn't look like she had a chin plastic surgery. Right ear position also adjusted so it makes more sense in this angle.
Body: Adjusted her breasts a little towards the head and resized them to better fit the angle and the size of the original art. Shrunk her upper torso a bit as well so she's less strong and independent amongst other female champions, but strong enough to overwhelm men. Left hand and left shoulder also adjusted, made the hand larger and upper arm more close to her shoulder, so it makes her left hand look more pointed towards the screen, it also adds more depth to the picture. I tried to make it look like she's running away from someone but at the same time also trying to lure them into the woods. It gives more of a naughty feeling about this character.
Background: Added light interactions to her surroundings (mainly the woods around her) so the background doesn't look out of place.
I also want to talk about the reason people having problem with her face. I think the thing with people having problem with her face isn't really that "she doesn't look asian", or "she looks too western". Considering that Ahri is probably created and mostly viewed with more or less the image of Naruto or feminized Naruto in mind, it isn't hard to understand that people really are just simply asking for a more "anime or manga-ish face". No matter how much asian Riot make her, the people won't be satisfied, it's impossible to get it right. After all people wasn't asking for a realistic face in the first place.
EDIT: Played around with Channel Mixer and Levels, a different colortone and brighter version that makes it look familiar with the old art which I think is kinda cool http://imgur.com/zsWiLT7