>>50380324I think this artist tries to imagine/design them basing off of real-life animal anatomy and to be true to the poke's environment. They don't go 100% by their cartoony depiction and try to tie in many of their classic iconographic elements with much more anatomically functional parts. It's not about drawing the fantastical cartoon beast hyper-realistically but designing them in a realistic manner and art style. Real animals aren't the most attractive thing most of the time. A pokemon will still be cartoony and authentic even with a hyper-realistic coat of paint if you keep all his proportions and whimsical accessories.
Personally
Overall, I like to think of this artist's whole set as to how people in the Pokeworld actually see these animals as and what we see are just simplified marketable cartoons or a culturally imprinted way of depicting them. Like we see this irl too, for example, modern cute/simple drawings or old mid-evil drawings of animals. I wonder what aliens would think how our animals would look irl if they only got the cute chibi art of them kek
In OP's case especially I think it's even clever to reference an axolotl due to Dragonite's ties to water.
A giant flying axolotl dragon. I guess they could tweak the proportions to be more appealing and Dragonite-like.
I really enjoy the grit this artist gives most of the time!
>>50381893This one's so nice!
>>50383436Leaned too hard on the shark part, forgetting about the environment its supposed to be in. Bleh
