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What would you say is the essential aesthetic of pokemon? The people, pokemon, and world in general all have a distinct, mostly coherent feeling to it, but how exactly? A few descriptions/things I notice: Features on trainers (clothes, devices) and any people really are sometimes comically bulky and large, other times sleek and athletic, or both at once (and yet it still works?). There's something that seems quite unique in the "fashion" here that I can't explain. It seems adventurous, though flashy and maybe even impractical at the same time. On both Man and Mon, complex natural forms and patterns (eg. hair, scales) are translated from their inspirations into simple geometric shapes and curves; this captures their essential character (or exaggerated parodies) while massively simplifying them. This general idea is common for many cartoon/anime styles, but pokemon seems to pay special attention to these details. There's also an overall abundance of bright, strongly contrasting colours to decorate people and monsters. Is this just a child-friendly thing or something else? The civilized world is a mostly happy, near-future setting with fantastic technologies at the forefront. Almost all of the great outdoors, the routes/caves/seas, are tamed with roads, fences, barriers, ladders, stairs, bridges, railways, etc. and are filled with all kinds of travelers. It's worth mentioning that this clashes with the ancient/legendary pokemon, which are often directly tied to a force of nature or at least suggest something primitive and powerful (think hieroglyphs and rocky ruins, or Mew's progenitor status). Antagonists are usually part of a fairly cliched man-vs-nature conflict, they're either a corruption of civilization or of nature who are doomed to fail for being "out of balance" in some way. And of course, here and there the classic Japanese look is mixed in to the world (eg. pagodas and stuff). Is this more than the sum of its parts? (cont...)
Anonymous
>>37076994 More questions:
What am I missing?
What makes it distinct from something like, say, Digimon?
Has it changed over time? I've only played gen 1 to 4 (partly), certainly there have been some changes but the core felt relatively consistent to me. However, I think in gen 1 & 2 there was heavier focus on the biological themes (DNA, evolution, cloning, breeding, even death).
I'm curious what you guys think, I'm something of a board tourist and not really an artist.
pics partly related
Anonymous
Well, there has definitely been changes over time with how they approach pokemon designs but I have never feel like a pokemon or trainer is out of place, but I guess that's because they have always keep the designs simple, so even if some designs may be a little bold they always end up blending with everything else. For example, something that I really like about trainer design is that they look distinctive and important but not out of place with the rest of the world, which is something that you see a lot in JRPGs, the main characters always wears really cool and fashionable looking clothes while everyone else just wears normal clothes. This also kinda happens with pokemon, all the important NPCs/Trainers wear very distinctive clothes while every other NPC just wears plain clothes, but it never comes out as weird. So yeah, I think simplicity is the most important factor in the pokemon design philosophy.
Anonymous
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>>37077142 This
Even though Kanto is more realistic and newer designs are more cartoony, none of them felt REALLY out of place when together. At the end of the day, they're all just simple anime creatures
Anonymous
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>>37077007 >What makes it distinct from something like, say, Digimon? i think the major differentiating factor is how each franchise approached the limitations of the hardware they were working with at the beginning. bandai went all out with hyper-detailed, fantastical designs and then tried their best to translate them to the tiny screens of the v-pets. meanwhile, game freak designed simpler monsters around the game boy's limited colors and pixels. by the time the technology they were working with started to get better, their "house styles" were already firmly established.
Anonymous
Good write up, OP. I can’t contribute much but I will say that pokemon is following a larger media trend of becoming “rounder”, or more bubbly looking. There aren’t as many edges as there used to be. This goes for both artwork and the models themselves. There’s also been a big shift away from the watercolor art to a style that’s meant to be more in-line with the anime. Some of this might be due to the move to 3D. It’s harder to rely on impressionism when you’re using active 3D models instead of the more abstract still pictures. Look at Xatu, he’d probably never get created in the current gen cause his presentation relies on his folded up wings and poncho. In the current games to illustrate his flying type they have him actually fly in the air. Skarmory is a less extreme example, his smug gen 3 battle sprite conveys an idea, an impression, his current battle model flaps its wings. I think the newer pokemon tend to look better in motion cause they’re designed with it in mind. Alolan Muk for example. All of this is pretty basic I guess but whatever, that’s my quick brain dump on the topic. The scifi utopia angle is definitely one of the most downplayed parts of pokemon, that’s for sure. Looking at the way 90% of characters dress you’d never assume that’s the setting. It’s mostly the teams and elite 4/champions/gym leaders who look at all unnatural or “anime” dressed.
Anonymous
>>37077265 >I can’t contribute much but I will say that pokemon is following a larger media trend of becoming “rounder”, or more bubbly looking. There aren’t as many edges as there used to be. as an interesting point of comparison, digimon seems to be going out of their way to avoid this trend. a lot of the new designs they've been releasing lately are full of sharp edges.
Anonymous
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>>37077453 That looks like a yu-gi-oh card.
Anonymous
>>37077453 Glad to know there’s an exception to the trend, though that design is frankly much busier than I’d like.
Also just want to say I detest the big headed chibi look. In the old games the overworld was a different level of abstraction from battles so you could get away with changing from chibi sprites to realistic anatomy with battle portraits. In the ORAS demo I played (my only real experience with the 3D games) they kept the weird-inbetween chibi models the whole time and I thought it looked really bad. Again though this has more to do with the amount of transitioning between levels of abstraction, than it does with core character design or fashion elements.
From what I’ve seen this is mostly an ORAS complaint, like I said I’m unfamiliar with the 3D stuff.
Anonymous
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>>37077713 i'll admit that lordknightmon x's design is extremely busy, but something about it just works for me. the rose-shaped shield and "thorny" armor are a cool nod to how vanilla lordknightmon is usually depicted holding a rose (see pic related). it's quickly become one of my favorite digimon designs.
i agree on not liking pokemon's chibi models. i'm not sure why, but they just don't look right to me. the soulless blank stares sure don't help.
Anonymous
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>>37076994 It would be great if a team of people worked on making a lore and pokemon species encyclopedia.
I really love reading about this stuff
Anonymous
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>>37076994 >>37077007 Pokemon has always been a mix of Modern and Traditional aesthetics with the occasional bits of sci-fi and high fantasy thrown in. It seems almost timeless because the series always seems like it's set in both the near-past and the near-future.
The characters have wonderful technology that s both familiar and futuristic, the same goes for the world itself, most of the cities in Pokemon could be translated into our world and some are even based off IRL places, but at the same time the world of pokemon has fully automated ecological utopias, gigantic living crystal trees, and ancient towns with ruins or chapels dedicated to living pokemon gods.
And as for the clothing, nearly all of it is actually something that you could see people wearing in our world for one reason or another.