#poke pixels

[normaldex]

#147 Dratini #148 Dragonair #149 Dragonite

Psuedo-legendaries are always fun to do! This is an odd one for me, since I can give a rough estimate of how long this took to do. Given I started in March (conceptualization), roughly ten months. Let's see some Dex entries!

#147 Proteus: "This ancient Pokemon is elusive and lives in caves. It's rarity causes some researchers to doubt its existence."

#148 Protojna: "It is unknown how this blind Pokemon senses its environment. It has been observed standing still in a pool of water for twenty-five consecutive months."

#149 Proterminus: "This Pokemon angrily fumbles around its environment. After years of torpor, it hungrily devours whatever it finds."

This line is based on the blind cave salamander mixed in with folk elements of the Olm. While I'm fully sure that an olm Pokemon designed by Game Freak would be Dragon-type, I knew even back in March that I wanted to make a Normal-type blind cave Pokemon, and what more iconic than the olm? These sprites have Chansey's coloration, though was that because it had the right shade of pink or because it had axolotl gills?

Proterminus had sprite parts from Druddigon (atrophied wings), Dragonair (gills), Magikarp (whiskers), and Golduck (arms). Protojna had Dratini gills because I thought it'd be neat if Proterminus had the most-developed and flowery gills.

Their movepools are probably what you'd expect: Surf, Rest, Stockpile, etc.

[normaldex]

#621 Druddigon

Hey, idk how long it's been, but I've been cooking! I've always thought Druddigon was underrated, as many fans bemoan its lack of flying ability, general competitive incompetence, and ugly design. (Hey, it's ugly, but a realistically designed world is going to have some ugly animals.) Anyhoo, I think it's pretty neat. Move below the fold:

I've renamed this version Dimeter. I've enjoyed the idea of a dimetrodon Pokemon having this name. The idea comes from the sail collecting sunlight (as reptiles are apt to do) and the Pokemon's capybara-like demeaner enriching the land.

This design started with a desire to take a Pokemon and bend it so much that it kept a lot of elements from its original design, yet still felt like a new thing compared to the original. Of course, this sprite still has pieces from Feraligatr and Nidorino, but most of this mon is Druddigon.

I can see this mon having Solar Power or a renamed Chlorophyll as an ability, perhaps something akin to Flower Guard. I can see it learning your standard dinosaur (despite not being a dinosaur) fare and things like Rototiller.

The sail gave me some trouble, but hopefully each attempt after this gets better and better!

[normaldex]

#438 Bonsly and #185 Sudowoodo

I don't recall which came first: the decision to make Sudowoodo into a Hidebehind or the decision to turn the Hidebehind into one of these. Either way, there was a lot of hemming and hawing about whether to turn Sudowoodo's sprite into the Hidebehind itself or the tree. I thought it'd be really neat to make a biological being that had an anatomy that just coincidentally had the same size and shape as Sudowoodo. I did trial runs with both, and having it be the animal doesn't really work (to my knowledge): sprites are two-dimensional objects that exist in the plane, so hiding it behind a tree would mean (due to congruency) that it would just disappear. However, making a believable animal to stick behind the tree also proved difficult. I was doodling one day and started by drawing hands that'd be wrapped around the tree. I realized that I didn't need to construct the whole animal, just the parts that'd be seen. Hinting at the animal would probably be more interesting; I hope you agree. If these were in a game, I'm sure the PokeDex would make comments about how nobody knows how they really look, how they're often mistaken for shadows, etc.

Bonsly being a Baby Pokemon means it has a lot of weirdness innate to its design. The idea for this one is that Normaldex Bonsly are attracted to well-manicured bonsai and that nobody ever *asks* for one. Designing the animal for this one was what I tackled first and it was measurably easier to conceptualize and do than the "pot." I originally wanted it to be a lot more polygonal, but................. In fact, I wanted it to be anything but Bonsly's the whole time. I got so desperate, that I even used the bag sprites for incenses (It looked pretty dope, but the view was head-on rather than angled). I looked at pictures of actual bonsais and figured, y'know, stubby feet would probably be fine.

Bonsly's animal has parts from Smoochum and Happiny, and colors from Smoochum. It's pot is colored as Bronzor and that's where the stubs originate.

Sudowoodo's animal has parts from Aipom, Stantler, and Meowth. I wanted it to have countershading, so that's why the face is colored by Trubbish and the hands are colored by itself. The shiny version has Stantler's colors because I just really liked how it looked.

[normaldex]

#255 Torchic #256 Combusken #257 Blaziken

If I were to rename these, they'd be Glabillus, Mogallus, and Gapillus, respectively.

Glabillus/Torchic is based on a featherless chicken. Mogallus/Combusken is based on a chicken that just happens to be really really fluffy, wherease Gapillus/Blaziken is based on a Silkie.

I would imagine these having Snow Cloak as a hidden ability. Their non-hidden ability would go Dry Skin -> Big Pecks -> Fur Coat.

I like this line to come back on because it really served as an exercise in figuring out what to cut and what to add without making things too involved.

Torchic has the colors of Scizor, but uses no other sprites. Combusken has wings from Archen. Blaziken uses parts from Combusken and Rufflet.

[normaldex]

#050 Diglett and #051 Dugtrio Diglett was inspired by a real-life experience I had. I'm also in love with JRPG enemies that interact with the environment, like the Buzzy Beetles from Paper Mario. It'd be cool if it had some kind of wall move that had different effects in different environments. If I were to rename Diglett, I think I'd go with the admittedly simple Burrow. It'd probably get to learn Withdraw and Quick Guard. Dugtrio (Pallwafer) would be much like Burrow, except with access to Ally Switch and Tri Attack and maybe some other moves. "As Burrow grow, they form tight bonds with others in its peer group. When a group lives in the same wall for enough time, they eventually become a Pallwafer." The mouse heads were made by fusing Rattata with Raticate, putting Diglett's Eyes onto it, then coloring it with Diglett's colors.

[normaldex]

#473 Mamoswine

This own was so much harder than you probably imagine. Mamoswine already captures so much of that amalgamammal theme I was going for with this line.

I would say this design took a lot of inspiration from the Boltunov mammoth- because that's true!- but it also seems the original design did as well. Oh well.

It's a mammoth. Does it have to be Ice? No; blubber is not the same as frozen. Does it have to be Ground? No; they're just members of Proboscidea. I don't know how much there was to do with this design to get it to cross the threshold into Normalcy. I threw some more defined hair on there to attempt to get there.

Other sprites used: Camerupt, Growlithe, Herdier, Spoink