>>45100668It wasn't meant to be captured, it was inserted into the game at the last moment because there was just enough space on the cartridge for it. It was an easter egg for the developers, and normal players were never supposed to find it. Shigeki Morimoto was the programmer who put it in and I believe designed the original sprite, but there were a couple of other people involved with his scheme, so it could have been someone else on the team. Mew didn't even have a design or a spot in the dex before the last couple weeks of development (when Morimoto added it in), which is why Mewtwo comes first numerically. This also means that Mew was designed based on Mewtwo, not the other way around, which is probably why it looked so alien at first. Sugimori based Mew's watercolor art on the sprite but made some alterations, which we learned recently was the same process for all of the Pokemon in Gen 1. The sprite for each Pokemon was first created by a sprite artist, then Sugimori drew the artwork based on those sprites and made changes based on his own interpretations or preferences. In pic related, you can see the progression in Sugimori's official art from Red and Green, to the first and second Red and Blue artworks, to the one created for FireRed and LeafeGreen and still used today.
