Drawn on paper and colored digitally. This is the fourth or fifth iteration of this design so far, but this is the first time that I've felt confident enough to show it to anybody else. Here are the concepts/lore I had in mind when making this guy, and some of the obstacles I faced:
>Final form of a grass starter line, based on African elephants combined with iconic African trees such as baobabs and acacias; it doesn't breathe or drink through its trunk, but instead uses the roots on the tip to absorb water into its system just like a plant
>aimed for a slightly more organic approach; tried to avoid unnecessary details while at the same time making it look decorated enough to not be visually boring; hoping to hit a "gen 3/4 with hints of gen 1" feel
>really like the idea of making its typing Grass/Rock, with the justification that its skin/bark petrified under the harsh sun of its natural climate or something, but couldn't figure out a way to effectively tie in "rock" to its design, aside from the gray color of its tusks/toes; also considered just making its skin grey, but it looked too unappealing and low-saturation, basically just looked like My Mom's Elephant got tangled up in a bush
>wanted to try and evoke the telltale bottom-heavy proportions of the baobab tree somehow, but struggled to do it effectively without detracting from the whole elephant part of its design
>had a hard time balancing the level of detail between its head and its torso, so just decided to make some roots winding up its limbs for the sake of an even "weight", but I'm worried that it will come off as too "Conkeldurr veiny" and off-putting, when really I just wanted to go for tree imagery while also demonstrating an animal/plant symbiosis
I'd really like to hear what people think about it, or how they'd improve it. I've been wanting an elephant starter for ages, especially a grass one, but instead GameFreak went and gave us another monkey, so might as well put my own imagination to work.
