"Longfingers" (pen and ink)

Inked drawing of some creatures from somewhere and/or somewhen else. Inspired (accidentally, compositionally) by a coloring book illustration from Torn World. I also had in the back of my a head a book I had as a kid, After Man: A Zoology of the Future. I think these are marsupalian, with some raccoon-like and some lemur-like characteristics.

This is a digitally cleaned up version of the original illustration. There's a matte version also (that is how I gave it to my friend for her birthday).

Visually, I wonder which version is better, and why... I don't mean in terms of quality of the image file you see, but whether the cropped (by the matting) or uncropped one is better.