Creature Design Concept - Blog Posts

A vaporeon study

Vaporeon is one of my favorite Pokémon. my first introduction to it was in pokemon red, where it looked like this:

(sprites from Red,Green and Blue)

So in my head, vaporeon looked like this:

It was also somewhat like this in the card game too:

with the neck frill and tail looking like soft goldfish fins, with a long snout, very elegant.

But the game's graphics evolved and Vaporeon changed to look more like the Ken Sugimori art. And eventually making the transition to 3D.

None of these redesigns are bad... but... the ear fins... oh the ear fins...

in the original sprite art, they actually looked like ears. and all my life I've been representing them in my art like this:

very pleasing to my eyes, but the reality is, they have never been represented to be like this in the games. That's fine, but what gen 6 did to its 3D model, to me, is murder!

Look at its ear!

Not only is it just a polygon with a flat texture hanging like a flag, if it wanted to represent an ear, it should have been facing the other way!!! like so:

It shouldn't, but this design "flaw" bothers me a lot!

and if we're talking about design, the neck frill looks a lot more like a firm fin now and not as soft, so it really should look like this instead:

It's a water creature, it needs to be hydrodynamic!

IDK folks, this is just my silly opinion. Feel free to agree or disagree with me but I'd love to know if it's just me who is bothered by this.

thanks for reading.

The Creature Awaits #94:

Each week I plan to feature an amazing creature, admiring God’s fantastic artistry.  Hopefully it’ll brighten someone’s day to see something new and interesting if they haven’t seen it before. : )

Welcome back to Green Month!

(Amazing photograph by Jeremy Squire. Be sure to check out his absolutely fantastic gallery. (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0))

The Lichen Huntsman Spider

Scientific Name: Heteropoda boiei

Region: Malaysia and the islands of Borneo, Java and Sumatra in Indonesia

Size: About a 5" (12.7cm) leg span

Interesting Note:  It was once thought that huntsman spiders (family Sparassidae) actively chased people, but it turns out that they are actually of a completely non-aggressive and timid demeanor - preferring running away over biting, and if they do bite, they only have a very mild venom (though the bite itself can hurt a bit at first due to their size.)  The misconception seems to have stemmed from their apparent inability to discern the shape of a human from far away.  Though the feeling of being chased by one of these relatively large arachnids may be intimidating, it’s best to just let these gentle giants scurry past and find their next little cozy spot to nestle into. : )