Plus Rival Schools got some love too
The nightmare to many in Ultra Street Fighter 4 has been missing from action for a decade now, but Elena will soon make her grand return again in the coming months.
Capcom has released a handful of new pieces of artwork to celebrate the holiday season that’s now drawing to a close, and one of them includes a fresher look at Elena’s redesign for Street Fighter 6.
We already got to take a look at the new piece of art Capcom shared for Mai Shiranui on her birthday / New Year’s Day as the next SF6 DLC character though this one is a bit different.
Capcom’s holiday survey offers up a special wallpaper for those who complete it before the clock runs out in the coming days featuring a number of their characters that impacted 2024 or are going to impact 2025.
That of course means a lot of Monster Hunter Wilds but also some Dead Rising, Mega Man, Dragon’s Dogma, Ace Attorney and a surprising chunk of fighting game representation.
We actually somehow missed her the first few times seeing the sample artwork, but Elena is there just to the right of the center of the wallpaper next to the giant M. Bison in the back.
This is basically our first new look at Elena since the Season 2 DLC trailer dropped where we saw her in the animation and on the Year 2 Character Pass art.
The survey wallpaper here shows the friendly fighter striking a similar pose to said pass art doing a one-armed handstand though it does give us a slightly different angle on her outfit and appearance.
We were of course most interested in seeing if there were any design changes visible between that portrait from June until now, and it looks as though there may be a few small ones.
Click images for larger versions
The only confirmed difference we can see in the art is the new one features a buckle on the rope belt for her pants.
It also appears as though the tiger stripes on her pants may wrap a bit more around towards the back, and her lip makeup is much lighter — although those could come down to how the artist is depicting her.
Capcom did previously go back and change up Akuma’s hair color from the time the SF6 roster leaked to when he was officially revealed, so it wasn’t out of the question they’d continue to tweak Elena’s new fit from what we originally saw.
But it looks like they’ll be sticking with what they had planned before.
On top of Street Fighter, Rivals Schools also got some love in this art with Batsu and Hinata appearing next to Bison and Elena too.
They’re presumably here to represent the Capcom Fighting Collection 2 planned for this year featuring the Capcom vs. SNK games as well as Project Justice, Power Stone and more.
Capcom also put out another piece of art for New Year’s with a celebration of some of their characters including Ryu and Luke along with Darkstalkers’ Morrigan interestingly chilling in the back.
With Mai next in line to release sometime this Winter, it probably won’t be until at least March with Capcom Cup 11 that we get to see what Elena actually looks like in SF6 proper — though we may be waiting even longer with her Spring launch window still a ways out.
You can check out how this new art for Elena compares to her previous portrait in the gallery up above, and those who want the wallpaper for themselves will have to complete Capcom’s survey before it ends.