hi! this is an ask to the author, hope that's ok! (priv answer is fine too)
i loooove obt! one of my favorite parts is how you give pokemon with parents of different species characteristics of both :o ! is there a way you go about it? how do you decide what would be a good fit? what aspects do you look for to combine? how do you avoid the pokemon from looking too much like a fusion pokemon, but more like still recognizably one pokemon but with other characteristics?
sorry if this is sent to the wrong place! the main blog doesn't have asks open haha, hope you'll have a nice day c:
// I love answering asks out of character!
Generally, the number one thing I look at when designing a character for a PMD comic like OBT is maintaining silhouette and notable traits. It's a very rough estimate I'm kinda pulling out of nowhere, but I think somewhere around 80% of the original species should shine through, and then 20% can be relegated to all those extra fun traits.
So for a character like Inigo, my first go-around with his design looked something like this:
Which while he has the notable traits of Nidorina and Kangaskhan, he was almost entirely missing the silhouette. Plus, the yellow doesn't really help sell "Kangaskhan" since they aren't a standout part of the design. I think the headplate and the pouch do a lot more heavy lifting for the design. So for his first appearance, I nudged him closer to the original Nidorina colors and gave him the Kangaskhan pouch.
And later on, I nudged him towards having more of that Nidorina and Kangaskhan heft in his design- they are by no means dainty looking pokemon!
For Dielle, I wanted to keep her heritage a bit more muddled intentionally. She's a fluffy Meowth, and she has electricity, but where does she get it from?
Well for that I turned to her instinctive behavior in battling... Remember this scene in Chapter 3?
She's not quite as dramatic since she didn't inherit nearly as much of that power, but the hints are still there!
Usually my thought process for choosing which pokemon to pair together is something along the lines of:
- Do I have too many hybrid pokemon currently? (Yes this is a consideration lol, but the next few steps might make me change my mind)
- Are there reasons for a character to not be a hybrid? (Based on worldbuilding, background, if it would just muddle the story... For example, I originally intended for Moxie to be part Marowak, but I decided to keep her as a vanilla Nidoqueen so Inigo's heritage wouldn't get too confusing as our first clear introduction to a hybrid character.)
- Are there pokemon with type similarities or design motifs that would play well together?
- Does it look cool?
And finally, I make sure not to combine more than two pokemon at once. Maybe I can do some little markings or give them some moves from a distant relative or another parent to hint at something else in the mix, but if you add too much to the pot it's gonna be hard to pick out those added traits.
And then if I decide to go through with a design, I take all those points into consideration while working on it! But a lot of time I kinda go with my gut. Like for Julius, when Sun and Moon were announced (all the way back during preboot OBT days), I always thought Lycanroc's midnight form looked a lot like Skuntank's cool hair! So I just smashed them together.
Sometimes, I just throw stuff at a wall to see what sticks. Which is what I did for Grovyle! He was originally going to be part Chikorita, but I wanted to go with something more visually interesting with his design.
And some pokemon only have distant ancestry implied! Wigglytuff has a Clefable grandparent, which manifests on him as star-shaped markings. (What's that? Clefable doesn't have markings? I like to think of it as theming lol)
But sometimes, I just like to mash my favorite pokemon together! Like this character who will show up someday- I won't show an actual image of them until they show up, but in the meantime you can enjoy the party sprite and try figuring out the species here!
