They really need to go back to basics when Pokemon creatures actually looked like animals, round, cute or fierce monsters, and had silhouettes. Pokemon somehow saves it's ass, and I do hope they come back to charming basic creations (Pikachu, Mew, Evee, Shaymin etc). This generation 9 roster is depressing!!! Except for a handful.
It's cause the sprites need to convey motion, they need to be a moment.... while, if they actually can move, then they realistically won't always move like that.... It's like when you over exaggerate playing tennis in a play....
Its because making proper animations for all the pokemon would be too time consuming and expensive (especially since they've historically had minimal 3d artists on staff. However they are hiring more now)
I've always hated that 3D pokemon practically just T-pose in most situations. Baxcalibur is a perfect example. Ashley didnt change its design at all, she just had it do a cool pose and suddenly I like that pokemon so much more.
Yeah, Baxcalibur is one of those 'mons that look better in motion. I got one in-game & he's pretty awesome when he's attacking. Feels like a Gen 2 'mon.
This is what really killed my interest in the series from Pokemon X/Y going forward. So many Pokemon had vibrant poses/idle animations in Colosseum/XD/BattleRevolution, but those very same pokemon had the life sucked out of them in X/Y onwards
Baxcalibur is one of my favourite and indeed in motion it looks better. At first I hated it but when I used it and saw it moving I instantly loved it. Now I think it's a great design, however, it'd be great if it had those fierce eyes instead of the plain and souless yellow ones!
It's not just the pose, it's also the 3d models and renders, just compare baxcaliburs art to his in-game icon (which is a tracing of the 3d model) and you can see that while they're in the same pose, the second is missing so many nuances that help giving it a menacing aura
As someone who works in 3d art, I think a long overlooked reason why Pokémon look so much simpler is because of the transition from 2d to 3d. Rounder, simpler shapes and silhouettes are both easier to make and more performant in the game engine. Back when the mons were sprites, it didn't matter how detailed they were. Today, however, the more detailed a model the more work for the artist, rigger, animator, and the game itself, it takes to render.
I think it’s also in part, due to a sort of misunderstanding of appeal. The best of gens 1-5ish (some of gen 6 too) have this element of being cool without necessarily trying too hard to be. The later gens in my opinion start telegraphing what you should think of them way too hard. They can’t look natural and cute no they have to emphasize the cuteness through every aspect of its design. The cool Pokémon can’t settle on just enough detail, no they must have more and more.
I understand that doing stuff like that gorgeous fan watercolour 3d stuff that's in the video would be prohibitively time consuming and costly, but I was seeing a 3d Farfetch'd and a 3d Vulpix on my N64 nearly a quarter century ago. I don't buy that it somehow isn't viable. Besides the newer generations aren't just all boring spheres, they're boring spheres that turn into overdetailed alligator dragon jetfighters from space.
That Baxcalibur redraw is so awesome, I think the note about dynamic poses is completely correct, how something is animated/posed can change the entire feel of how a model looks
Sprigatito looks absolutely WONDERFUL in this redraw. Perfectly encapsulated the early look, the crayon shading, eyes with character and - most importantly - brought the feetsies back
I think Voltorb is a special case because it was designed to be a mimic, tricking players into thinking they were going to pick up an item in early pokemon games while providing a neat visual gag that explodes in your face. However, Voltorb's specific design niche doesn't fit modern pokemon design and will likely never be able to fool anyone again.
I personally think that part of what makes the older artstyle of Pokemon so appealing to many is not only the type if water color look to them along with the white highlights rather than a flat simple color. But also the fact that (at least to me) the older Pokemon art almost mimicked a style if painting a wild creature that could exist in an actual world, whether that be a fierce looking dragon or an adorable looking duck, they'd look like creatures rather than cartoons if that makes sense. In other words the older artsyle would have Pokemon feel like what they are, Pocket Monsters that you could capture.
I agree... even if the early pokemon art style was a very stylized look, it still felt like you knew how the pokemon was constructed. like, how it would move, what materials it was made out of, how hard or soft its body would be, how it would sit down to eat, or lie down to sleep... stuff that all living creatures do. and that was kind of the endearing part about pokemon. I think it's just kind of unfortunate when all the pokemon inherently look like they're made out of the same kind of gummy-textured material... and I'm not trying to insult the artists or devalue their work! in fact, I think they have a really challenging job trying to depict natural-looking things in this medium. and I mean, there are still some designs I just wholly dislike, even understanding the limitations of the medium... I think some pokemon are just proportioned too strangely, or have features that I could only ever call ugly-cute, if that... but also, that's purely an opinion. the real area where I think it hurts is when the pokemon start looking more like a windup toy or a squishmallow, rather than something that could ever conceivably be alive.
Agreed. I know he called his other video "bad" about the change in design but I still think he was right. They went from cool monsters you'd see in the world to....Neopets. Basically. Cartoons, not monsters. Opera singer, mage, tank, Agent 007, soccer player, wrestler.... Can't have a turtle with CANNONS or a frog that does a kamehameha using a giant flower. If squirtle was made nowadays, it would have some BS theme personality.
@@suicune2001 ik you weren't responding directly to me but this is a really good point. it's always been a little weird when a pokemon has elements to its design that look explicitly man made, like how magnemite has those cartoon horseshoe magnets and actual threaded screws on it, or how hitmonchan just always has clothes, including boxing gloves... some stuff just requires you to suspend your disbelief a little, and some stuff can be canonically explained... like maybe magnemite were originally man made and became self replicating when they became intelligent? or maybe some human technology looks that way because pokemon came first... maybe the knowledge of which one came first is lost to time, like unown and their resemblance to the alphabet. but those explanations kind of work because there's enough history to it that you can believe this wouldn't be known information, or at least not common knowledge. and in the case of pokemon like hitmonchan, you could maybe intuit a deeper codependent link between that pokemon and human culture in general... the accessories could very well be given or acquired, and the pokemon's uniform appearance is just for simplicity's sake in the games, cards, and anime. but also, to the people in the pokemon universe, magnemite just looks like that. and not everyone lives near an area where you'd see them that often anyway, so some people might've just never had cause to wonder about it. it all has the ability to feel naturalistic with the right explanation, and if some pokemon have clear links to humans, it seems like a more intentional theme... pokemon has always been about the way humanity affects nature/the environment, and how nature/the environment affects us too. sometimes this is antagonistic, but sometimes it's just interesting to see the prolonged effects of peaceful coexistence, and how society and nature both advance when they build themselves up around each other in tandem. but for that relationship to continue feeling balanced and genuine, pokemon need to continue to represent the power of the natural world. they need to be identifiable as naturalistic, or have genuinely compelling explanations if they aren't, and there needs to be a sense of actual contrast when the most nature-oriented pokemon come up against the most techy forms of humanity. and when the lines blur, that needs to feel intended... like these are signs of humans intervening in nature, or maybe human technology has advanced as a result of studying nature and pokemon, so some of that inspiration just wraps back around aesthetically. but when you get something so complex and specific as scorbunny's line so closely resembling modern soccer players as just like... a feature of its biology, like, how do you explain that resemblance? soccer feels too new to have influenced scorbunny's development as a species, and this goes beyond just accessories and learned behavior. and on the whole, I feel like too many pokemon are being anthropomorphized by giving them a humanoid body type. I'm not against having some, but even pokemon like lopunny or hypno kind of still felt like animals. if you met one in the woods, you'd believe that it just lives there. cinderace just looks so inextricable from human society, if I found that thing in a forest, I'd want to know why it isn't living in a house. it's just too much of a guy. and it's ironic that we're getting pokemon games that put the sprites in the overworld _now,_ when pokemon are looking less and less like animals with each generation. all the old pokemon look like they belong outside, wandering around in the grass or swimming in ponds... but a lot of the new ones look like they just wandered out of the nearest town and got lost.
@@loregoblin3854 Exactly. Gen 1 wasn't perfect in that regard. Like you said, Hitmonchan is a thing but somehow it always worked in my head. Probably because its aesthetic worked with Hitmonlee's and the other fighting Pokemon. And the style didn't really clash with the other Pokemon in general of that generation. Plus, it was an extremely rare Pokemon so you'd get the idea it was unusual or special. Magnemite made sense because you only saw it at a power plant. So there was something at the power plant that turned into a Pokemon or maybe it was a result of experimentation. It's not like you'd see magnemite wandering in a forest. Just like how grimers came into existence because of human pollution so you'd see them in extremely polluted places. But yeah, there's more and more humanoid Pokemon. Not just humanoid but Pokemon you'd expect to be able to get a job and own a house and live like a human. I'd look at Cinderace and assume I'd be able to speak human to it and it'd speak human back. It's like it's a soccer player that also happens to be a furry. I think that's a good criteria. "Is this just a guy/girl in a furry suit?" lol. If you look at New Pokemon Snap, you really see this change in design. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE that game but it's so easy to notice how half the designs don't really fit with the other half.
I really like this new version of the Frigibax line. Didn't notice before but you're totally right about Baxcalibur's awkward pose. Now I can't unsee it, what have you done 😂
Ashley not only nailed it. She straight up 720 between the legs backward Slam dunked on those designs. Like holy cow. They were all amazing and totally got it with the 1st designs
The only one I disagree with is with Rookidee's '96-ification. Both Pidgey and Spearow look like slightly monsterfied versions of real-world birds. Pidgey, for example, looks like an Eastern Song Sparrow or a female Rose-Breasted Grosbeak (and not like the pigeon that its named for), and Spearow looks more like a falcon or hawk (which makes sense when you look at the wordplay of the Japanese name, [オニスズメ] or "onisuzume", which can be broken down into its two components "oni" (meaning "demon") and "suzume" (meaning "sparrow"), so it's literally "demon sparrow"). Rookidee looks very much like actual chickadees.
@@KainYusanagi Yeah the issue with changing Rookidee's design is that it takes from the Chickadee aspect of the bird... Chickadees are literally friend shaped after all.
This must've required a lot of effort to make Every time I play Pokemon I always loved to imagine them as actual living being living in the real world How they would be in nature, or in the city walking on the streets, or flying free in the skies The old sharper and rougher style feels like an actual creature that would roam the wilderness Ashley and Vivink did amazing work!
Haven't finished the video yet, but I think one main thing that drove the difference between then and now is the removal of restrictions. Gen 1 and 2 both had a major limit on how much space an individual Pokémon can take up, so all of their important details had to fit within that space. Larger Pokémon were simpler due to needing to fit all of them there but smaller ones didn't have much to sacrifice, so the artists flexed a bit more. As screen space stopped becoming an issue another issue came up - too many Pokémon! Now larger Pokémon have more space to work around in, so more complex designs can be used, but now there's so many Pokémon to keep track of that they prioritize simplifying the smaller forms. After all, they can use that to emphasize the "friendly shape" so that the larger forms, the ones you'd likely spend more time with, can flex their "coolness/edgy" shapes instead.
There's another reason. Inspiration. Pokemon used to be creatures first, made to fit their region with some incidental inspiration from aspects of the real world mixed in. Now, Pokemon are concepts similar to most other JRPG creatures and attacks, meaning they borrow imagery and design heavily from mythology, concepts and aspects in the real world to convey their theme. This works well for other games, but for Pokemon it crashes hard with the verismilitude and natural aspects of the game.
Good point, but that doesn't explain someone drawing Stunkfisk, showing people, and not getting laughed out of the room. Modern Pokermans design philosophy is just quanity over quality.
@@MaxiemumKarnage This is the same generation that have Zekrom, one of the best design in my opinion. So saying quantity over quality is just your opnion since every gen have shit pokemon desing.
@@MaxiemumKarnage What quantity? Over the course of 3 years we got only about 70 new Pokémon in Gen 6 with way more people working on them. Gen 1 had 150 Pokémon made in 5 years, with less people working on them. Also Gen 1 has Voltorb and others that need way less drawing time than stunfisk.
@@MaxiemumKarnage Quantity over quality, my ass. That’s the same generation with Chandelure, Hydreigon, Eelektross, Volcarona, and Golurk, just to name a few.
What you said about the posing in the dex at 12:10 I think gamefreak themselves are also aware off. The reason I think this is because you have the more 'book cover'-like images in the dex now with more lively depictions of the Pokémon. Cool video and really great artworks from Asley and Vivink!
this is easily one of my favourite videos from Mark. This isn’t because I’ve grown up with Pokemon, but rather the way he structured this video. He saw something amiss, and created an interactive, informative video about it. Really well done.
I love how Meowscarada looks like something out of Nights Into Dreams. Wonder if a Mega can make it look more like Reala. Until then I'm naming mine Days.
Baxcalibur evo line is phenomenal. It's practically the same details but drawn in a more dynamic way. Makes it looks a lot more menacing and threatening.
It's funny. More proof that the modern Animaniacs designers are just as clueless about the original series as the writers. Even when they have a guideline, it's just "off".
As someone who prefers the older Pokemon designs and water color scheme to the more cutesy, single color tone designs of later gens this was a great video, and ofc a great job by all of the artists on the new(old?) designs
I vastly prefer the old Pokémon aesthetic. It has a level of heart that I don’t see in the more cartoony, digital looking modern Pokémon. The washed out watercolor contribute so much to the aesthetic.
Looks so much better it literally gives me such a warm an melancholic feeling seeing these - that's the way they would look 10 times cooler an like the way I'd love them to be❤️
Omfg the baxcalibur line, skeledirge and sprigatito redraws are AMAZING If Baxcalibur looked like that I would’ve added him to my team immediately but I just didn’t like how he looks in game 😂
Seeing this makes me yearn for the older art styles once more. I like the designs for newer generations but the old art style had…heart, I think. I really enjoyed seeing different styles used for 9th Gen Pokémon. Kudos to you for going the distance and rounding up such amazing talent!
My favorite part about this video is seeing how each artist goes about giving the image the water colored feel, vivink and Ashley use two pretty different techniques in digital painting.
Great video as always! As someone who refuses to use TikTok I am quite disapointed that you decided to leave out the other poses. I would recomend posting them both on TikTok but also on RU-vid Shorts
My thoughts too. Love Mark's content, but gatekeeping stuff behind another app is kinda frustrating. Yeah, TikTok is the place to be, and that's all good, but at least give them to us on RU-vid as well.
Voltorb is a really simple design, but I love the premise of it, and a lot of the stuff surrounding it, with it being Pokémon 100 being the icing on top
I think the first two don’t really work specifically of the referencing old Pokémon. They’re just going to look like old Pokémon if you do that. Obviously the original artists knew how to draw birds that didn’t look like Pidgey. Referencing the inspirations while using the previously established principals of the original style seems like a much better approach and seems to have yielded more interesting results.
The biggest factor for the radical style change is how easy it is to render in a (low performance) 3D engine. That's really the heart of the entire ordeal. Expect A) lots of simple geometric shapes and B) features being 'drawn on' to those shapes, rather than being their own shapes or external features. Because drawing a texture on a shape saves memory.
I love these reinterpretations! I miss the angular designs of the original pokemon. Thanks to these incredible artists for letting us live the 90s fantasy once again!
also not a nitpick but while the baxcalibur redraw looks great, a explanation to why the actual design looks like.....that, is because its a reference to old gozilla and the standup straightness is how the old gozilla suits just kinda were once again accually like the baxcalibur redraw much better tho, if it looked like that id have it on my team for sure instead of only needed it for type coverage
I think there's something to be said for the one Ashley struggled with -- Quaxly -- that says more about the difference between early and current generations than any of the other designs here. She specifically called out *themes and concept* as the reason why she had so much difficulty transferring it to the original style, and from what I understand of Pokemon and Ken Sugimori's work on the series, that makes a certain amount of sense. As much as we like to joke about certain Pokemon being thematically simple or esoteric (looking at you, Klefki), the reason why Pokemon like the Rookidee line aren't looked at with disappointment or frustration stems from the depth of their concept. Think about it: the regional birds are often just... birds (Pidgey line, Pikipek line). Rookidee evolves into a blackbird that's also a stalwart knight. The theming and concepts of a lot of modern Pokemon have become much deeper than in past generations, and those sorts of Pokemon have become the rule now, rather than the exception. When people talk about the designs of older Pokemon, they often focus on the strong designs themselves, since also having a strong concept behind them was a rarity. Farfetch'd, while a unique and strong design, is just a bird holding a leek. Nowadays, the designs are somewhat simpler, and they can afford to be because -- on the whole -- the concepts underpinning those designs have much more depth than in the past.
Another thing that I think is unique to modern pokemon designs is that evolutionary lines often tell a story, instead of just being a simple upgrade of the previous mon. Take Sobble, for example: it starts out as a fragile crybaby pokemon, but as it grows stronger and evolves, it ends up becoming a cunning, confident, and dashing spy/agent. We had some pokemon like that in the past, like Magikarp, but with the increased focus on themes it seems to be more commonplace in recent gens.
I disagree with you but I can see where you are coming from, as for Rookidee only it's last evolution really incorporates that knight like aspect and as far as metallic birds go Skarmory, an earlier design can imo easily rival it. Personally I would think of Farfetch more akin to Quaxly in it's simplicity showing that early and newly designed pokemon can be equally simplistic in concept/theme while imo the older ones still being stronger in design, maybe due to the striking artstyle of the early generations. I also have mixed feelings on your conclusion that newer pokemon can get away with being simpler and less designed due to the concept underpinning their design as I feel older pokemon had a good amount of strong concepts but admittedly less thematic pokemon designs for example Venusaur, Rhydon, Alakazam, Nidoking, Gengar, Gyaradoss, Kabutops, Eevee and their evolutions, Amphaross, Metagross etc. The thing that disappoints me the most outside of the change in artstyle and simpler design philosophy is the declining amount of designs that are a mixture of multiple animals or organic life, instead they made way for pokemon that are just cartoon animals with sometimes their element just slapped on, and while earlier pokemon games had this too it was mostly just fish and birds or rats, while now we have Scorbunny who encapsulates their respective "job" as soccer player well but is in retrospective just a cartoon soccer playing rabbit that happens to be partly red, making it not really representable of it's fire typing imo on top of just being an animal from the real world instead of a monster. Eevee doesn't just look like a fox or a bunny it looks like a stylized version of both mashed together, same as Nidoking, it started out as horned rabbit of japanese mythology but evolved into something nearly unrecognizable depicting what I believe to be the essence of a "pocket monster"
@@tomfoolery7797 "instead they made way for pokemon that are just cartoon animals" Said every 30+ years old Pokemon fan who forgets Pokemon is a franchise aimed at children who like cartoons, not at 30 years old adults.
@@Nekoszowa Everyone likes cartoons Satanae. I don't get what point you're trying to make, but you know what children like more than cartoons? Extremely cool looking cartoons that have a nice art style and some actual effort put into their design.
Being a fan of the anime I feel like there's something else that was lost with the artstyle evolution, some of the new Pokémon doesn't look like animals that exist in the wilderness of the Pokémon world One of the things that i loved the most about the first few generations of the anime was just watching these beings in their natural habitat, seeing a school of Magikarp s swimming in the background in a completely unrelated episode or how the Clefairy's metronome was organically integrated into the world made these creatures feel so alive to me, and i just don't get the same feeling with some of the new ones
I mean I guess, I personally prefer more of a futuristic design than a animal like one, it's one of the reasons why I love gen 5, because it focus less on the animal designs and more of a futuristic design, pokemon like bisharp, cerledge, exadrill, rotoms, tikaton, Greninja, septile, and dracapult, will always be more interesting to me design wise then Rattata, Pidgey, arbok, Kanto Persian, tentacruel, etc. Never really cared for ones that look extremely close to real life animals.
@@cesarcastillo7129 I know but I Just never really cared for the basic animal design pokemon, and prefer the more futuristic design, the animal design ones for me got to be somewhere in the middle, like xerneas, it based off a basic deer but has a nice rainbow majestic design that makes it hard to compare it to a regular deer, or empoleon, it's based off a penguin but made so that it looks like it's a wearing a metal coat, and gave it a Trident mask, I've just never been a fan the pokemon that looks extremely close to the animal it's base off of.
It's interesting, since in the most recent Pokemons, they are pretty clear that pokemon eat each other and are eaten by humans, but they seem more like pets and mascots, which creates a dichotomy.
I am someone who loved Ken Sugimiri's watercolor style artwork from Gens 1 and 2. The realistic style always spoke more to me. If Skeledirge looked like that for real, my starter choice would be much easier! Excellent, excellent work everyone.
Still watching the video, but I really wanna recommend everyone watch the "Evolution of Pokemon Designs" video series. It does a great job of going into the design philosophies of each generation.
While the drawings are pretty cool, I don't really liked some of the redesigns. Like the Rookidee redesign looks too much like Pidgey, almost like a recolor, it loses what makes Rookidee unique and I think people need to think about that. I often see people saying GF is "running out of ideas" but if they made the designs so similar to gen1 then it would really seem so. I really like the new generations, gen9 especially has a lot of amazing new designs and I would never change them
I will always have a soft spot for the OG gen 1 Ken Sugimori art. The sharper edges, water colours, and the fact they where pencil drawn so you could see certain imperfections. I would do anything for Pokemon to return to that artstyle.
It's mostly the smaller designs that bug me. A lot of them, particularly starting with Gen 6, lean in to bobble-head territory. Rookidee was a good choice to start with since the poor thing doesn't even have a neck!
I think the main thing that people dont realize is the types of pokemon made now are different. Pokemon in gen 1 and 2 were very plain in comparison and they didnt really do anything specific they were just treated as animals that existed but newer pokemon are more themed around 1 central defining trait like a parrot that sings, a duck who dances, a frog thats a ninja. These pokemon wouldnt have been made in gen 1 because back then the philosophy of pokemon was that they are strange, fantastical animals but now they are treated more like characters. In my opinion a much prefer the older Pokémon because i enjoy the idea of them being wild animals but some new pokemon look too much like American cereal mascots for me to enjoy them, when i think of scorbunny i can’t imagine it living in a burrow in a forrest but i can clearly imagine him next to tony tiger on a box of kellogg’s cereal.
That logic falls apart when you realize even the old Gens had those with mimes, martial artists, boxers, body builders, Psychics, Santa clauses etc etc...
@@V-Jes thats true but i feel like its more common nowadays and with some of those examples they arent based of real animals so i don’t mind it as much like i think hitmonlee is fine because its just a made up monster thing but when its clealy supposed to be some type of animal and it has a gimmick attached to it yeah i dont really care
That Baxcalibur looks incredible. Skeledirge did too. Though that's one that looked pretty good to me before the redraw. Props to whoever designed that
I would argue that rounder pokemon like voltorb has "sharper" details as contrast - his eyebrows. Even oddish feels like it has a contrast with the circle at the bottom and "sharp" leaves on top. I feel like a more typical modern design would be circular, friendly eyes for the voltorb and wavey leaves for oddish. I think the hisuian voltorb actually is a good example of having more of a detailed friendliness Also generally, newer designs have bigger heads to look cuter. Sometimes it looks impossibly big
That redraw of Baxcalibur has actually made it a favorite... as if a godzilla inspired pokemon wasn't enough. making it look aggressive and powerful as compared to looking like "its being scolded" really sheds a new light on it.
I always thought I just preferred the old pokemon out of nostalgia, now I know that I would like the new pokemon just as much if they still had the old art style
All of these classic style pokemon look amazing and definitely fit with the classic style, great job with all of them. Personally i would have taken the Rookidee's design in a different direction given that Natu exists, however i can't say it doesn't look like a first generation bird pokemon. I guess it just goes to show that even with this limited style, there are still a number of philosophies to follow and room for individual artistic expression.
I agree, Natu and Hoothoot are good bases to go off of, but to be fair they did say 1st gen, although they also used Totodile as a base for the next Pokemon so I digress. Ashley did smach dab job with these though, amazing!
My favorite thing about the Baxcalibur redraw was that they made the weird red things on its wrist look less like maple leaves glued to its arm and more like actual claws or blades. It's actually one of the coolest (no pun intended) Gen9 designs, but wtf are those supposed to be???
I'm not sure if anyone has said this, but I think the style of art is changing almost solely from the technologies they're using. The amount of details that the first generations used were to help sell the fantasy of what pokemon would be like. When they were using pixelated textures, art was a crucial aspect to being able to sell what that pokemon would be like. The newer generations are not hindered by those same limitations, being able to render them in any amount of detail that they please. So they purposefully had to simmer down on the details to still help sell the fantasy of the pokemon world.
For me the reason art is changing its more about less detailed pokes = easy to work with the models. i do not disagree that nowaday they can just make the poke so detailed as they pleased but in gamefreak book that means no no, so the less detailed and simplistic is the pokemon the better to accomplish those dates to release the game.
Oh shit, you actually revisited this topic! And with some absolutely killer re-imaginings, the biggest of kudos to the artists (fuecoco and the pseudo line are absolute delights) and to you for taking the time to look into this again. The differences between stylistic choices throughout generations really do make you think, though! There is absolutely the factor of the shapes for some pokemon becoming more simplified for one reason or another, like marketability or more ease when making 3D models (s/o to the user to pointed out that possibility, it makes a lot of sense.) I think another factor is that pokemon designs as a whole just... have been leaning less into creature design and more into character design? Like there's kind of a joke about starters having to have "jobs" now because of how explicitly themed their designs have been since around gen 6-ish. It's almost definitely another marketability thing (and I'm personally not the biggest fan of it, but I also know that's the gen 4-5 favoritism speaking), but does go to show how much the designing principles have changed for the series. Anyway, yeah! It's cool seeing you talk about pokemon again, and this video was pretty cool o/
I think that, after having read some comments and enriched my perspective, the biggest difference is that 2D designs make the mons look like creatures grounded into a more natural physical world, while the 3D designs are designed stiffer and less complex to make everyone's work easier, similar to why we like DBZ art style more than DBS, the simpler design with less anatomical details looks soullessb and way less dynamic, specially when we're talking about characters that are supposed to look like bodybuilders on olympia day. So for example, that blue and yellow puffy round bird, you could compare it to the pidgeys in the episode about the island with chunky fat pidgeys, there are very round and fluffy birds in real life, but the design of that new pokemon looks extremely simplistic, almost minimalistic. New mons most of the time are designed less articulated, less expressive, with less mobility and dynamism, like their had less bones and a simpler structure.
Lovely renditions. Something random that people don't realize with Rookidee, is that the white around the red irises, is feather markings, not their scleras. It's why their actual eyes end above the lid line, it's because that's not a real upper eyelid, it's a design to give their face it's grimacing quality, it's why the lines main ability is unnerved, it's markings unnerve the enemy.
Boy I wish I could get pokedexs of gen 1 redraws. I find them more striking as a whole. Interesting though how wooper fits the new gens really well though
Great Fuecoco take! One thing to keep in mind is that, according to researchers like Helix Chamber, most of the 1st Gen designs started as 56x56 pixel sprites. The fact that the monsters at their most primitive needed to be easily legible at low resolution greatly affected their designs, even as Sugimori fleshed them out in watercolours later.
Man these designs are so sick, gosh I miss 2D pokemon so much. Like when the 3D is cool and full of life like new Snap it's better, but for the main games the 2D sprites were just so cool, and getting to see the new poses every gen was fun.
That Skeledirge redesign is so good I'm honestly mad and wish I didn't see this video so I'll never be reminded how Skeledirge look better. The design right now, while the "best" among the new starters, still bothered me when I first saw it because of how overdesigned some of its parts were while the rest (like the back) felt flat.
I really liked these designs, Mark, really accurate to 1996. I also have an off topic question: Would you ever review any of Osamu Tezuka's works such as Astro Boy since he was a major inspiration for the works we have today?
Quaxly's theme makes me wonder if utilizing design for something non-pokemon to help out would aid in artwork of him. That non-pokemon something I'm thinking of is... Happy Feet. Yeah, the main character is a penguin, but they also discover they like to dance.
Almost all of the kids shows in the 90’s were sharper and edgy. Our society has gotten softer, more “approachable”. I prefer the older stuff (#Gen3) but I still think most of new Pokémon are still well designed. Great video!
I always loved the art style where the colors kinda fade in the earlier generations, rather then the whole clean colored sections of later generations.
I think a better question to ask instead of “which is the best designed Pokémon?” Would be “Which Pokémon design best encapsulates (pun intended) that Pokémon’s generation?”
Your ability to recruit all these talented people cannot be understated. Ashley and Vivink's work was amazing, and Editor-San tied everything together beautifully!
I'd love to see Ceruledge and Armorouge in these styles. I think it's odd that despite all of the design philosophies I love in older games that these two in particular ignore, I still seem to love them design-wise. I'd like to see how they'd be converted and how those design philosophies would change in a Gen One coat of paint
The rookidee re-draw doesn’t look like a good translation of style at all. It just looks like a palette swap of pidgey. I figured the purpose was to translate the design to a different style, not completely alter the design. Rookidee resembles a stocky bird, like a chickadee, changing the body and feather profile departs it from its original design
Oh...OOOOOOH...These are mind-blowingly better, the same overall design, but the retro style makes them *chef's kiss* Baxcalibur and Skeledirge looked beyond incredible.
