So next is "Firelion". Hrmmm.

I didn't hate Firelion. I thought the name was horrible, but of course it eventually turned out that "Firelion" was just the monster's placeholder name and not official canon, so that helped. I voted for Obsidius in the poll (?!), but at the same time I was keeping track of Firelion's votes and kinda secretly hoped that he'd somehow win. There were aspects of him that I didn't like, but it was nothing major, I suppose.
Part of it was his niche. Being an asian lion-guardian and a protector of Mu, Firelion effectively stole the thunder of both King Caesar and Manda at once, and I wasn't too crazy about that. Of course, origins are easy to change- so even though it has no impact on the design itself, lets just assume my version's not from Mu, eh?
Really, as far as the actualy design went, I thought Firelion was okay- but there was one thing that just irked the hell out of me: reverse magmouth syndrome. He couldn't open his mouth! Why?! I would think that a dragon/lion/fire elemental could find a few good uses for a mouth- like, biting, maybe? Or fire breath? Or even roaring...?
So, I split the mask in two on my version so that Firelion could bite, breath, and roar. I also tweaked the scales a bit, giving him some larger, more ornate ones along the areas that flames are generated, just for looks.
The only other thing I really changed was his coloration- he's more of a Firetiger than a Firelion now, heh. The stripes were sort of a last-minute idea, but I like the way they look.
It's also worthy of note that I changed the mane- which was sort of on accident. I had it all the way around his neck in the sketch, but then I sort of absent-mindedly penned it this way. I kinda like it more this way, but it wasn't really on purpose so if you don't like it, yeah, that's my bad. XP