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There are so many pokemon media, though; games, anime, manga... I had to decide on a style before I could find an artist. Since I'm an oldschool fan I decided to go with the water color style that franchise illustrator Ken Sugimori used to bring the Pokemon world to life in its earliest days. That style more than any other felt like the visual language of my own childhood. My search for an artist that used this style inevitably led me to the only man for the job: Chris Szczesiul. I mean that literally; as far as I know Chris is the only artist actively taking old school Sugimori-style commissions.
Fortunately, Chris had just started a sale. I sent him an email inquiring about a serial commission: a series of Sugimori-style illustration featuring me at different ages accompanied by a Charmander across its stages of evolution. Chris was so agreeable to work with that I asked if we could expand the scope of the project to an image of myself representing a journey through every canon region of the mainline games, plus the Char line. Against his better judgement he agreed.
