Cool design. Castlevania-like bg tiles?
Anatomy needs loads of work, when you've tightened this up the shadows play to that as well. Right now there's a load of banding (shadows are following the outlines but not the form) on the gargoyle guy, I think I can point to that as part of the problem.
Will drop an edit here + more to this post in a bit.
EDIT:
So here it is. It's been a while...but you can see it in action.
You're on point with your redraw of the 1st one, just tighten up the banding a bit more, cut out some colors and you won't have a problem revamping the 2nd. Edit has some anatomy pointers but it's hella rough and off in parts so I'd advise using proper reference.