Creating Pokemon Is No Cakewalk

[IxionIndustries]

May I direct you to a far better Pokemon design?
http://darksilvania.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d1w35fb

those are hardly great designs.
what was he thinking when designing those rats?
"you know what would these better? MORE WHITE BITS"
if he were to remove a few of pointless white bits, then i would probably like them more.

oh, and it grinds my gears when people use "Pokemons" as a plural for Pokemon.

Those are bones, and they are not all rats. It's a flea, a rat, and then a possum. It's better than the shit I've seen come from the legit Pokemon desginers.

Oh and by the way...

Spoiler: For your pleasure:

 

[TheGameXXVII]

May I direct you to a far better Pokemon design?
http://darksilvania.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d1w35fb

those are hardly great designs.
what was he thinking when designing those rats?
"you know what would these better? MORE WHITE BITS"
if he were to remove a few of pointless white bits, then i would probably like them more.

oh, and it grinds my gears when people use "Pokemons" as a plural for Pokemon.

Those are bones, and they are not all rats. It's a flea, a rat, and then a possum. It's better than the shit I've seen come from the legit Pokemon desginers.

that doesn't exactly counter my point that the "bones" are sticking out of almost every available space, making it a clusterfuck of white.

 

[DocBalance]

Pokabu, a fire-pig, was designed around the fact that pigs roll in mud. It shoots fire out of its snout to cool off instead of getting all dirty.

fire out of its snout to cool off

fire to cool off

The reasoning for a lot of Pokemon and their attributes has always baffled me.

It shoots fire out of its snout to cool off instead of getting all dirty.

But fire heats things....
I don't understand

Okay. I have to clear this up. I am in no way a supporter of Pokemon, but I am a supporter of playing Devil's advocate.

It makes perfect sense, when you think about it. Pokabu can't get rid of excess heat, the heat builds up inside of it with no way to release. To get rid of that heat, it converts it into fire, which it then shoots out of it's nose. Not really that far-fetched, and a far cry from the most ridiculous Pokemon out there.

 

[knhirt]

It makes perfect sense, when you think about it. Pokabu can't get rid of excess heat, the heat builds up inside of it with no way to release. To get rid of that heat, it converts it into fire, which it then shoots out of it's nose. Not really that far-fetched, and a far cry from the most ridiculous Pokemon out there.

Yeah, OK, that makes sense. I don't get how it has anything to do with the "pig" design (one is releasing heat through the mouth, the other is cooling off using mud), but whatever. At least it isn't as ridiculous as Magcargo's body temperature of 18,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ah, Pokemon.

 

[Dan E]

I play pokemon to this day and still love the art style. Just some of them look a tad off but the rest are really cool.

 

[chickenlord]

you know what you could do to have less work...STOP MAKING MORE FUCKING POKEMON!!! use the ones you got already to make a different game!!! do i have to say it... really?! it doesnt even have to change that much... pokemon...3-D... the same game as pokemon red-black... but in 3-D...no! i dont mean a 3DS kinda 3-D...i mean a 3 dimensional game...like the kind you tried before but didnt put as much work into, make that...then i could die in peace...the new pokemon game for the Wii is almost what im looking for, battles look half decent, but can u only battle as pikachu? thats lame... and i dont think u can catch any pokemon either... so yeah...make a 3D pokemon game...

 

[nosafetynets]

I think the worst part is their inability to come up with decent names... That would almost make up for the lack of creativity - or over-creativity - in the design of the pokemon themselves.

Most of them are rather complex and clever...

Some, perhaps. But most, far from. If you call clever making a play on the English name for the animal/plant/object/mineral the pokemon is supposed to somewhat resemble or an action the pokemon does and adding onto it (Rattata, Raticate, Sandshrew, Magneton, Squirtle, Mankey, I could go on and on in the original 150 but I'll spare you the rant), sure. There are some fun names in there, I'll grant you that. I'm a die-hard pokemon fan, have been since I was young. But I'll pass on a lot of the names - particularly outside of the first 200 or so. After that, most of the good names were taken. I don't begrudge the designers their hard work, I just find it mildly amusing and sometimes a little wearying.

 

[Space Jawa]

Wow, seems like we got the problem there. 17 people? That's way too much. That actually explains a lot, like why the Pokemon look like such a mess and look so un-unified (for lack of a better term). Get a small team of 1-3 skilled artist, let them go wild. That way the Pokemon will look like they actually exist on the same planet.

I'd hardly say that's any different from the real world. Can you really look at the countless species we have on Earth and say they all look like they're suppose to come from the same planet?

 

[IxionIndustries]

May I direct you to a far better Pokemon design?
http://darksilvania.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d1w35fb

those are hardly great designs.
what was he thinking when designing those rats?
"you know what would these better? MORE WHITE BITS"
if he were to remove a few of pointless white bits, then i would probably like them more.

oh, and it grinds my gears when people use "Pokemons" as a plural for Pokemon.

Those are bones, and they are not all rats. It's a flea, a rat, and then a possum. It's better than the shit I've seen come from the legit Pokemon desginers.

that doesn't exactly counter my point that the "bones" are sticking out of almost every available space, making it a clusterfuck of white.

That one thing sure has quite a clusterfuck of bows on it. Yet at least the rat is a skeleton, so it fucking makes sense.

 

[Thorvan]

I think the worst part is their inability to come up with decent names... That would almost make up for the lack of creativity - or over-creativity - in the design of the pokemon themselves.

To be fair, that's more of the localization team's problem. They need to get the folks who did Mario and Luigi on that, ASAP.

 

[faceless chick]

yes they still look like shit.
i remember how i invented pokemon back when i was 12..draw whatever comes to mind and give it a funny name. voila!
only thing is i couldn't cash in on it >.>

 

[Ddgafd]

To be fair, drawing over 600(?) sprites each with a couple of frames of animation and different stances depending on status effects(that's what I understood, if I was wrong, then sorry) is quite a workload. Same with designing the damn things.

Also, as a challenge to anyone who cares, come up with 600 pokemon, names and all, and don't run out of ideas.

 

[nosafetynets]

I think the worst part is their inability to come up with decent names... That would almost make up for the lack of creativity - or over-creativity - in the design of the pokemon themselves.

To be fair, that's more of the localization team's problem. They need to get the folks who did Mario and Luigi on that, ASAP.

Agreed!

 

[Adam Galli]

pokemon was cool when i was a kid. only 151 one of the little bastards. now there are too many. IMHO pokemon needs to retire.

 

[La Barata]

You're telling me that with this giant staff of poke creators they still managed to come up with the new pokemon starters? Y'know, the ones that make Jar Jar Binks look like a credible character?

 

[Shockolate]

Huh. I'm surprised there ISN'T a pokemon that looks like a cake.

I mean, they got one that looks like ice cream.

Matter of time I guess.

I still love my kung-fu fire monkey.

 

[Antylamon]

I'd love to see all the rejected Pokemon concept art.

 

[AC Drawings]

I imagine all this fallout is due to different standards and aesthetic appeals Nihon has from the rest of the world. I'm not a huge fan of the Gen-5 designs either but considering that somewhere along the line they planned all these things and tried to weed out bad ones, most likely what seems like sucky design choice to us is a good idea to them and they're not exactly catering exclusively to a western audience, they're using their own standards.

I just this conversation could go on without all the spite and vitriol and we could articulate our opinions reasonably. I mean they're just designs and it's not like there's anything we can do about it unless we dedicate all our time and energies into learning Japanese, becoming designers and trying to strong-arm our way into the Game Freak design studios and have our ideas heard and considering Nihon is a freaky tight-knit anti-immigrant nation that would rather die than have outsiders help, I doubt that'll ever happen in the near future.

 

[Samechiel]

Oh, cry me a river. It must be difficult making essentially the same game every few years.

Aww, beat me to it.

And to the people saying the games are the same, what did you expect?

Sadly, it has nothing to do with "sticking to a formula." It's copy-pasting one game over and over, altering minor elements here and there and calling the sloppy paint job a new game, and to be frank I'd be disgusted with any company that did it. Gamefreak has done it 19 times. 20, if you want to count the inevitable Pokemon Gray.

 

[Draven Canter]

maybe instead of gray itll be pokemon rainbow with a special rare item event distrubited that when held by kyurem with reshiram and zekrom in the party will turn change them to their original form before they split in half theyll have their final signature attacks then one called rainbow beam and when the item is removed if u dont have space for them to become three pokemon again the pokemon that cant be in the party will be chosen by u and put in the pc box