The VG Resource

What have I been up to lately? Pokemon, working with a programmer and musician to maybe inch away at Hieros Gamos stuff (but doing little work on the sprites myself...), that kind of thing.





^grass starter missing


This was for a "Who's that Pokemon" competition where you shade an outline/shadow. The one judge of the competition seems to like more complex shading, so I tried to cater to that.

Interesting ideas, I like the potted plant concept in particular. The second form is a bit of a cop-out, though, the only major difference is the number of leaves on the head. Even doing something like adding a tail or making the legs green would spice things up, add more of a "this is the middle of an evolution chain" feeling. Have you considered changing up the pot design as it evolves as well?

For the final evolution of the first line (seahorse?), I assume the far leg shouldn't be a stark blue/black, you should fix that up.

actually i though the third evo of that chain was the one breaking the "flow" of the evolution

The First is a Pony

For the Second One you could make some change to the evolution like Ivysaur, you see it changes some little things, the Left Leg is a little shadeless, and somehow, the Shading of that Pokémon is a bit irregular to me, it doesn't have a circular shape as it should be, I mean the Bottom, the Top is okay, and the Starters, the only problem I see, is that the Water Pokemon is almost biting the Fire Pokémon's Tail =D

Yeah, I know I want to keep the third stage of the grass one as-is, the 1st could do with minor changes and I agree that the second is very weak design-wise.

For reference, the first line is a lake monster (Such as the Loch Ness monster, Champ, etc)

The guy I'm working with on his Game Maker Pokemon project wants "hand animated B/W style sprites" (which is a oxymoron, but whatever), so this is as close to B/W animation style as I can get without some fancy game program.

tl;dr lazy to program the animations.

also tbh the grass evo is okay imo, ever seen Mankey/Primeape? They're almost the same thing. Voltorb and Electrode are also a good example of this. Apparently Pokémon doesn't 'really' care in making the evos totally different, in some cases. So, I don't see any problem on it.

I don't like the blue horse's feet (they're all at the same height. The back ones could benefit if placed a lil' higher).

I'm eventually going to shrink all the pre-posted ones to 80x80 (eventually), so I will fix them when I do that.

More!


Pokhog and Porkking


Grubiny, Pupike, and Teracles.


Lovely unshaded outlines:


Lemmichute and Lemmikaze


Gogoose

I guess Lemmichute, Lemmikaze and Gogoose are WIP's, right? cause they lack shading and lighting tones,

Pokhog, Porkking, Grubiny, Pupike, and Teracles are more cool,

By the way, Porkking = Blond Justin Bieber.

Nah, I would say that Porkking is a reference to Porky from Mother 2/3.

Most of the sprites are well created, but I find it hard to give tips. Mainly because before the pixeling, there's the design of each fakemon.
Improving the design will influence the aesthetics of the pixel.

Question. Not sure if this should go in my thread or elsewhere.
Fakemon are fun to make, but I get ridiculously tired of hearing people say OMG THEY AREN'T POKEMON CAUSE THEY LOOK NOTHING LIKE THEM. Some guy says that to me on my thread on another forum, straw that broke the camel's back, etc, and I end up snapping at him.

I tell him that I really don't care if my fakemon aren't totally convincing. Making them is fun and a good way to get posts/views/popularity. My real passion is my Hieros Gamos monsters, but they get no attention at all to which he replies:

"But that's because your "monsters" are just extremely similar to pokemon, they don't really obtain any other quality equal to that of what you lost by not making it a full-fledged pokemon. Therefore they appear like bland versions of pokemon."

At this point I want to wring his neck, but I figured I'd come to you guys for art advice instead of some douchebag on a general Pokemon forum.

So, my questions are:
1. Should I try to improve the similarity of my fakemon to canon? It's been years and I haven't improved... at all. I feel like saying "screw it" and not caring at this point.
2. Should I even be focusing on Fakemon in the first place? I don't want to quit cold turkey like before, it's a fun pasttime of mine and I make a little extra commission money off of it, but at this point it's just for the views and attention I get on deviantart and Pokemon forums. My Hieros Gamos stuff doesn't get even near that amount of attention.
3. Do my monsters look too much like "bland Pokemon", and if so how can I change that?

Sorry for tl;dring you there. I'm just really frustrated.

Anyways. Random fly Pokemon.

It doesn't matter what YOU want to do. Don't imitate a style just because someone thinks you should. You're not going to be able to please everyone in the world (although you can certainly try!) On the other hand, if you decide to develop your own style, the fact that you're making this creatures that are basically fakemon will draw these kind of comparisons repeatedly (how are you creatures different from fakemon other than artistic style?), so either get used to it, or add a twist that makes it clear it's not just fakemon. There's no reason to get so worked up about people calling you out on not imitating the style, especially if you know someone's going to do it. Just make a note somewhere that you're not going to respond to those kind of posts and why!

Unless you're getting paid big bucks making these for a company, there's no reason to quit or continue, if you enjoy doing these and it stimulates your creative juices then go nuts. If you're just going through the motions then you might want to step back and ask yourself what you're trying to accomplish. Although, I haven't seen a lot of non-fakemon sprites from you so it might be a good idea to try something new!

Took your advice on making something besides fakemon. Obviously not done, needs to be shaded...

Unsure if I'm going to finish this, but it inspired me to write a story that I really like (for a contest too!), so something did come out of it.

Did some more work on this guy.

Another WIP, part of a set of chibi WoW characters:





The rest of the set.

i like your work i wish i could get aorund to making some good sprites of my fakemon.