Quoted By:
Shape and silhouette, colour and detail, concept and execution.
Designing a good Pokémon should be like designing a good monster, but it's actually rather different.
The silhouette is important to differentiate the design from others. People need to be able to tell what Pokémon it is from the silhouette alone, hence the "Who's that Pokemon" segment. This restriction is not common at all in any other design process. Ofcourse, the pipeline goes from thumbnailed silhouettes in most professional design standards, but you cannot finalize a Pokémon design without it being different enough from other Pokémon. This may explain why modern designs, both Fakemon and Pokémon, have such obscure shapes and sizes. A good Pokémon design should have a final shape and form that is strikingly different but pleasing to the eye without losing base form of anatomy and muscle. Of course, bad Pokémon just look like an animal or object with a bit of colour on it, so it takes practice to get the balance right.
A lot of Pokémon rely on a small palette of 3 to 4 colours, so the palette needs to be good or else the design with ultimately fail. Things that could factor in to the colour choice are typings and the environment the Pokémon lives in. But good designs use colour as part of the design, see Magmar.
One reason why people think new Pokémon look like "Digimon" may be the added details and colour above the standard of generation 1. However, people who make Fakemon can confuse "too much detail" with "anatomy and imperfections" and end up with bland, multicoloured blobs with no purpose.
I bring this up because compare Primape with Pignite. I'm not saying they should be the same or one is bad, but the body that Primape has is detailed and has visible skeletal and muscle structure. This can be done with varying line type, curve and soft with hard and rigid. Primape also has an imperfect silhouette, being the edgy but fluffy fur on its body.
