About the Development of RoK (IMAGE-HEAVY)
Wow, it has been exactly one year since I posted the first page already? Time has gone by unbelievably fast! The story behind Routes of kanto goes farther back than that, though. It is actually my very first big comic project!
Yes, Iâll talk about concept art and all that good stuff! All under a Read More.
The idea of doing a nuzlocke run came to me somewhere in August, 2011. I had been looking at lots of cool gijinkas at the time, and the idea of doing a gijinka run seemed super fun (I was right about that!).
I ran into two problems right off the bat, though: I had no idea what sort of plot I wanted to have and I had barely any experience making gijinkas out of, well, anything.
This is the earliest excerpt Iâve got for Routes of Kanto:
Set in an alternate crapsack universe where there are no humans or PokĂ©mon trainers and every PokĂ©mon ever is a gijinka. Instead, the gijinkas organize teams themselves and fight (or they just go solo, but that usually ends up in death; it should be noted that most of these gijinkas arenât afraid to kill during a battle, and itâs not rare for it to become a matter of life or death)
The Elite Four is basically composed of four teams of the best fighters in the region, plus the champion team. The same goes for the gyms, instead of gym leaders you have a team of gijinkas specialized in one type.
It didnât even have a name back then! It doesnât even resemble the same story.
(Champion Ket would like to contest this whole âsolo fighters die most of the timeâ thing)
Later on, the run would be named PvE: Player vs Everything before I changed it into its final name, Routes of Kanto.
It took me a long time to figure out what sort of theme or plot I wanted this run to have, and even now the finer details of most of the latter plot are still sort of vague in my mind. Youâd think Iâd have it all figured out, working on this for the past few yearsâŠ
The first version of the RoK beginning! Originally, Chika would run away from home to become a fighter. While she does leave Seafoam Islands as well on the final version, sheâs not a runaway anymore.
The other big problem i had was designing the characters themselves: Since I was still worldbuiling, it affected the character design as well. The art style was also originally much closer to my ânormalâ style, became extremely stylized, then stopped at a halfway point between both.
(all artwork dates from 2011-2012 except for Ketâs)
In Chikaâs case i wanted a recognizable, fun design since sheâs the starter. It was⊠easier said than done, especially since so many people design gijinkas for Kanto starters.
I remember her very first design had a military theme of sorts. It was redesigned to this:
Still wasnât what I wanted, though. Eventually, I came into the idea of having her wear a turtleneck (the pun wasnât intended, no)
This was where I got to a point I was happy with. Notice how the style was much more stylized too.
Orvilleâs case is similar, but I think he may have been even harder to make. A loooot of people design Bulbasaur gijinkas and I had no idea what to do with his vines, so making something different and recognizable was a challenge.
One of these is titled FINALLY2.png, just so you know how fed up i was while trying to draw him. I did eventually stumble into something I liked, though:
Perfect! At least a vine-scarf is somewhat original? I really love how his design came out, though.
Funnily enough, Dell was first designed way before Chika did, but his first design has absolutely nothing to do with his current incarnation.
Stereotypical book nerd I guess? Which then became this:
Iâm not sure why his hair is blond (he wanted to be a shiny maybe), but I think itâs the first design of his with the current style I use for the comic. I took his Rattata ears out eventually and made his hoodie and hair purple to match the rest of the color scheme.
Dellâs face is actually based off one of the possible player character designs from Animal Crossing, yup.
Ket is a funny case. Originally, Kanto was going to have a standard 6-people team as Champions, but I decided against it because that would give me waaaay to many characters to keep track of and I wasnât sure how to deal with them, plot-wise.
(The original team was Raichu, Pidgeot, Dragonite, Lapras, Ninetales and Pangoro.)
So I decided to go for a solo Champion, from an unexpected Pokemon species, as well.
Ket had to be designed while the page was already starting to get linearted, but they fit so perfectly into the role and the plot that itâs like they had been there all along!
(second on the right was where I said âYES thatâs where I want to go with this character!â)
Took me a few tries, but I finally reached a design I liked! Interestingly, I couldnât seem to settle on this being a female or male character, when I had the sudden epiphany that hey, non-binary people exist and Ket was probably one! Hence why I arrived at a character whose gender is neutral.
(other characters would end up being nonbinary as well, with all sorts of nb identities)
And that ends the RoK concept post! Unfortunately, characters that havenât been introduced yet donât get their turn now, but maybe next year?
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