Fakemon Friday: Larvurp, the Grub Pokémon

Imagine the trials and tribulations to get this post live, particularly because I almost lost all of its data in my previous computer malfunction, but I could retrieve the WIPs and finished. You may remember this from Bluesky, as these entered Justahusk's contest, but I did subtle changes and did more art of them to fit all I do for the other sprites I've posted here, so without further ado, let's see them:

This line was a concept I had a couple of years ago that got its own previous version which got refined into this. I wanted a line based on the process of creating thread and then fabrics, with the base materials being produced, then processed and finally turned into the final product. Adding the visual evolution in colours to pastels to full saturated RGB also helped strengthen it.

I don't think this would be any kind of end game line, in fact, I think it would be suited to the early bug role, though I'm not creating a full region at this point, so there's a big possibility of something else suiting the role better, or maybe another line complementary to this and having two of them.

The rendering of these was interesting, as I noticed my previous art relied too much on dithering, and I've broken a bit of that trend using it purposefully to give a fuzzy texture when I feel it's appropiate. Part of improving is identifying problems and finding solutions to them, and I absolutely feel like that's something that is working. I don't really know if I want to revisit many of the old concepts I had, but I am unsure of how many are saved in the computer move. Also, maybe that would be getting a bit too comfortable and many of those old ones weren't even interesting, concept-wise.

Also animation-wise I feel like I am getting somewhere. It's probably the most different from the original reference I'm doing, as Pokémon just edited the sprite parts instead creating artifacts that in my opinion don't look that appealing. At least I want to be proud that my frames are hand crafted so if a pixel is poorly placed, it's my fault. 

Realistically, the only thing I have left to touch on is the power of exaggeration, specifically in Moxtyle. The previous iteration on Bluesky saw a Moxtyle that looks very similar but more balanced. Making the thread abdomen more slender helps a lot give it a more defined and interesting silhouette with barely a couple of pixels of difference. This is something I have to explore more and more in my work to make it stand out, too.

And now, probably the part you wanted to reach, where I shut up and show the goodies, because teasing for the next fakemon post would be irresponsible, I don't know myself:

 

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!

 

 

 

 

 

Fakemon Friday: Posble, the Miner Pokémon

I finally finished this line! Today, we're going to be talking about my first double typed fakemon in this project, Posble, and its evolution, Maretal.

They have a long story with me, Posble was one of the first things I wanted to create because the type combination was unique and I wanted to give it a try. Years later, it's still not used by the official source! Anyways, let's see them first and then we'll talk about what went on here:

Since the first draft, I knew I wanted to make this combination one of those pokémon that basically tells you in the dex entry that it's the spirit of someone that died in specific conditions, but avoiding that trope. So I thought a miner was the perfect idea, giving it a helmet to have some contrast. Another thing I wanted for this line is to have no face. At least, not the usual one with two eyes, a mouth... that's why I preferred to imply the eye in both designs, to still give it something that can feel familiar and recognisable.

Maretal has had many iterations with other names in the past, but all felt like they failed in the same thing: they felt like Posble, but big and with a hole in the middle. I knew I wanted the geode-like hole in the middle of its main body, so what to attach to it was the main focus to make it feel different and unique. Initially, I tried to make it, weirdly enough, too creature-like, and it made it feel clunky, uninspired, like a regular golem but broken. It was thinking out of the box and making it not be symmetrical, or even needing to imply actual movement, what saved it for me.

I think that the element that really sold me the idea is the cage with the small spirit inside. It references how miners used to carry small cages with birds as an oxygen test. If the bird dies, well, get out immediately! It feels cruel, nowadays, and I didn't have the resolution to play around with a companion, like a pokémon like Skeledirge has, so it is just a wisp with no discernible features. It still sells the point that something caged died there, but in a way that could be interpreted as another metallic thing that was lying around and the creature assimilated.

I am unsure if this type combo would fit the role of the regular rock type in a cave, like Geodude or Roggenrola could be, but honestly I am not balance team, so for now, it could work!

This post gives closure to an idea that was marinating in my head for actual years, as I feel satisfied with Maretal's iteration, and I feel it's a nice final stage.

For palette, the regular one was something I decided early on, but the shiny was also something that took a bit to decide. The contrast between yellow and purple felt great, complimentary colours and all that. And making the rock grey felt correct. I experimented with more neon colours, like orange or lime green, and their complimentary shades, blue and red, specifically. The orange and blue one was the one I was going to go for, as the red made it look a bit too evil for my liking for this line. Also orange felt like a nice shade as I've seen miner helmets in that shade. But also, the colour that's not yellow that I've seen the most is white, so I decided to experiment and then the green, eerie jade shade felt natural. Totally not a biased opinion. Not at all.

These posts take a long time to make, specially because of what I'm going to show you next, which is the animations and backsprites, so if you took the time to read this, thank you so much and I'd appreciate your feedback and suggestions! For next time, I don't know which one of the ideas will come to life, so I won't corner myself teasing anything! But I hope I can show nice things!

Fakemon Friday: Tokief, the beggar Pokémon

 I know I took a lot of time to post another one of these but hey, sometimes you are overwhelmed with so many different tasks and it's difficult to get the results you long for!

My concept here is around a feature that was removed from the original source due to its ties to adult activities that should not be promoted to children, and that part I understand: the casino! Yes, my concept revolves around a Pokémon related to casino coins or tokens, and it's even named after that! I also did something that the original canon hasn't done yet: a three stage pure Dark type evolutionary line. Although I call my equivalent Shade type.

As you can see I decided to make a raccoon evolutionary line, getting inspirations from the aesthetics of cartoon prisoners and novelizations of the presentations of organized crime. I think this is a perfect introduction of what Shade type is to me. As I personally consider this universe to be better left in a veil of mystery and not delve deep into things, because when you start, everything starts falling apart very quickly, I wanted to explore something that they have already explored, like organized crime, under the lens of something that the iconic Team Rocket has already played with. And you know what it is said about casinos, house always wins. What if, in this theoretical reboot or region, Pokémon were in charge of being "house".

I beat myself a little bit up with these concepts as I thought they were a bit simplistic and didn't have enough bone in them, so to speak. I took a very superficial approach, but in some occasions, that should not be a bad thing, probably. Even with the shinies, the approach was really simple: oh, they're raccoons with a grey and red as an accent palette, let's make them red panda inspired. The golden hue was a second choice, I initially thought of making it green, not just because of my huge bias, but because of the shades that can be found in a roulette. But it just wasn't working with those exact red shades and decided to move on and try other possibilities. Grey wasn't flattering, so I went for gold.

And I will also add: I won't apologize, this is baby's first furry bait, I hope you enjoyed it. The people that saw Tokapo said that the design could be categorized as "daddy" and I'm... confused, about how did I achieve that. Not disappointed, though!

This is the first evolutionary line that I'm posting here, so something important to me is how it interacts with itself, what does the evolution add to the design, personality wise and just in a progression sense. I wanted the first stage to be very light-hearted, to not make the whole line gritty and tonally dissonant with the rest of the universe, but at the same time I wanted to make the final evolution imposing. The humanoid approach here was something that I settled on quite early on the design phase because I thought I could add elements of gangsters and yakuza easier on that kind of portrayal, but at the same time I wanted to exaggerate proportions to not go full on furry trap. The middle stage, though, it had probably the more varied iterations, because several attempts were too disconnected from either the first or the last stage. A scrappy middle ground that wants to steal but is not good enough to get what it wants cleanly felt nice.

Honestly, I almost consider that this evolutionary line shares elements with what we could qualify as the official starter formula: cute first stage clearly showing the animal and a personality trait, in this case I'd say cheerful is the superficial one although the rest could be classified as clumsy, an awkward middle stage that nobody will pay attention to because what we want, what we need, is that final evolution that in so many cases has to stand on two feet and basically be almost humanoid in behaviour and personality. I got comparisons from this fakemon to the official Incineroar, vibes wise, and I wanted to slightly stray apart from that.

In any case, I wanted to further solidify the casino theme, so as an additional requirement for evolution I thought that you'd have to have a certain amount of casino coins or tokens for the evolution to go through. You can't become the boss without capital, so the trainer is providing that, in this particular scenario. And yes, they'd be consumed, now are Tokapo's. I kinda dislike how gimmicky one-time evolution methods can be, specially in the later generations, because there's no way we're not meant to look it up on the internet. So I wanted something in the middle, something simple and very thematic but also unusual. I will consider adding this "pay in game to win" mechanic to another creature down the line, but it's something that I can't promise. I don't even know what will be the next fakemon I'll post, I still have to make it!

Additional art of these three is dropping, too. I do animations for the front, backsprites and icons, see you in I hope less than two months, readers that are here for fakemon design: