>>57388601The smaller sprites are just reused from past games, whereas the newer ones are based off of the models and thus come with the lower level of saturation presented in the new games. This leads to the smaller sprites often being a lot brighter than the new ones and popping more, or in some lines where the family shares a palette the bigger one looks out of place with the rest of them.
>>57388630Problem therein is that this isn't really a concrete rule in place, with Kanto and Regional Pokemon often breaking form. Why does Linoone not get a big sprite despite being a full evo? You can say it's because the variant is not a full evo and thus they would be inconsistent with each other, and I would agree, but then you look at something like Alolan Ninetales which still had a small sprite next to the regular one despite both being fully evolved (which gets even more confusing when you look at LGPE where bigger sprites were first introduced, in which Ninetales did not have a big sprite). It also leads to cases like Rhyhorn having a big sprite despite being a middle evo because Rhyperior did not exist in LGPE.
Even within the new Pokemon there's no real structure. Galarian Farfetch'd has a big sprite despite having an evo. Galarian Corsola does not. Regular Farfetch'd, despite not having an evo and being the same mon as the Galarian also does not have a big sprite. You could make the argument that it's because the design is a small single stage but both Stunfisk got a fresh new sprite despite being even smaller. It's just an all around mess.
