Fakemon Friday: Achooni, the Fluff Pokémon

Never ask a woman her weight, a man his salary and Yuraite how long did it take to make a new fakemon. But the zero viewers interested in this, I'm back with a new line!

These two are probably the combination of many bad choices one after another, so get ready for this wild ride that Achooni and Achuuni are!

This whole idea started because I wanted to make a dust bunny. Literally. For an evolution, I wanted to go for something that wasn't a big dust bunny, so instead, I went for a cryptid lagomorph, to justify the Fairy type, so I went for a very loose Jackalope. But that felt a bit flat, so I wanted to move the concept forward, I didn't know what kind of personalities I wanted. The first form was clearly going to be cheerful and active, but for the evolution, everything was up in the air.

And then, in June, I was quite sick, and in the worst day of it, I just had an epiphany: the names. Achooni felt natural, playing with an onomatopeia and the common mispell of the world bunny. And spelling it different... Achuuni. A chuuni. Chuunibyou, or the syndrome of eighth grade, those characters that are so over the top in their antics and mannerisms. It came together.

Achooni was quite fun to render, trying to make the fluffy part distinct from the ears even though they're the same colour, and Achuuni gave me trouble. The initial pose was more dramatic but the render wasn't turning out okay at all.  Then I had to start over and do a simpler pose and scale from it. To give it a bit of extra visual elements, I decided to get inspiration from subcultures of the late 2000s, just because they are familiar to me. So the piece on the hips, that I wanted to keep the horns colour around the rest of the body, is inspired by the way scene fashion wore two sets of belts crossed, the chest puff is reminescent of the handkerchiefs that in the era had every alt kid on a chokehold and bracelets galore to tie the fluff and the yellow. I don't even think it translates that well without the explanation, but that could be something to keep in mind for other creatures and iterations.

Palette wise, I wanted a light brown and then a pink for Achooni, to make it explicitly darker and more purple in the evolution. A tarnished yellow felt correct for the horns so I added that to it. Shinies, honestly I was just thinking "this in pink would be a very cute cotton candy", which was a concern if I wanted to not make it dust brown, I don't want confusion with the Edible type, but in a shiny I decided to relax it and let the trans community have their pink, blue and white icon. Achuuni's shiny was decided basically based on Achooni's. If the dust turns pink, I should turn dust into something in that family, and a desaturated red seemed appropiate. For the blue, I shifted it towards a teal. Those kind of shades give me necromancy vibes so I felt it was good for it.

Now that I'm looking back to back at Maretal I feel like the shiny was lazy and predictable, as both lines have similar tones, but I guess this only means that I should go for something of a different colour next!

I picture this line as being annoyers. The high speed and the abilities are meant for it to be able to drop some chip damage and status, though again, I'm not a competitive player so probably everything needs readjusting here and there. These are more about the vibes. Environment-wise, I find them fit into more of abandoned urban areas, destroyed and old buildings where dust clumps up and alternative teens go for the aesthetics, so in that regard it also works together.

And now, it's time to show you the reason these posts take so long: I don't only do front sprite with the shinies, but I animate them manually and do the back and icons! Thanks so much for reading and watching my creatures, I hope next one comes faster. Which one will be? I still don't know!