DISCUSSION: How "Realistic" Do Your Pokémon Look?

[canisaries]

I got the idea of this thread when trying to figure out ways to describe a Gastly. In my fics, I imagine the Pokémon to look at least semi-realistic, though try to shoot for as realistic as I can, given the humans they live alongside in my fic have normal proportions and look like they do in real life (with the exception of some wacky anime hair colors).

How far from the official cartoonish designs they are can vary a lot from mon to mon - a Pidgey is easy to imagine as a little bird given its design isn't very outlandish, but with something like Diggersby I'd need to figure out how those weird muscular ear-claws work (hopefully without sounding too uncanny or creepy). Then there are the Pokémon who don't even really look like they could translate to the real world. A lot of these are ghost mon like the aforementioned Gastly or its evolutions, but there are also mon like Clefairy, Jigglypuff and Floette who you can't exactly find a real-world animal counterpart for.

But to get to my actual questions: what level of realism do you imagine your Pokémon as? What do they look like when you picture scenes in your head? Do they look just like the 3D models, do they have more texture to them (detailed fur/feathers/scales/metal), are their proportions changed to be more close to reality? And how much of this do you actually write in?

Feel free to also share any creative interpretations you've come up with for those more vaguely shaped mon I mentioned before and help me figure out what my Gastly should look like.

 

[Iggy]

I try for a realistic approach for everything and that, now that I think of it, would either leave me struggling how to depict the ridiculous ones in a somewhat sensible fashion (like the Diggersby) or just leave them out (probably my option). For any Pokemon, I like to throw in little bits that give them an extra edge of realism, small movements, little sounds, the feeling of the skin, any other peculiar characteristic property (tiny sparks of lightning jumping from a Pikachu's cheeks, water dripping from a Blastoise's water canons after a hydro canon, ect.).

To me, Ghastly seems like a shimmer shaped as a black orb that is shrouded in a small nebula, constantly shifting in and out of visibility (maybe like the Cheshire cat?). Should be awesome and rather terrifying, as those Ghost-types ought to be (IMHO).

 

[CrystaI]

Take a physical appearance realism scale of 0-10. 0 is the photorealistic appearance, drawing it out will be like just taking a photograph of that creature shall it exist in Real-Life or a Real-Life cosplay actor. 10 shall be the most cartoonish super-deformed caricature where not only head-body proportion is realistically impossible such as 1:1 like Peanuts characters or 1:0 like Kirby, but most of the time the art style is so mascot-like cutesy or the Japanese-style kawaii and lot of details are simplified or intentionally dropped, and the most significant part is oppositely exaggerated and oversized.

As an example to demonstrate my scale, the following picture gives a nice sample:

Spoiler

From left to right, I give it a scale of 10, 7, 5.

IMO, the Pokemon official artwork will be at the scale of 7~10. Many Gen I pokemons was 7, starting from Gen II it begins to shift to 8, particularly noticeable in NFE pokemons. Gen VII was further heading to 9, some may even be at 10.

But for me personally, inside my head and also within my fic, I tried to image the pokemons much more realistically at the scale of 2~4. For example this is a Pikachu I redraw it myself in less cartoonish more realistic style around IMO scale of 3:

Spoiler

BTW, those hyperealistic grotesque monsters such as those in Monster Hunters or Kaiju in Pacific Rim shall goes beyond negative in my scale. I'm not aiming at those, nor I think I can image pokemons at the scale of beyond zero.

 

[Iggy]

Using your scaling system, Crystal, I'd say I'm aiming for around 3-4. That Pikachu fits my fanfic nicely (although Chuki is but a toddler). Nice drawing, too.

I also remember a bunch of drawings on Deviant Art of Pokemon being drawing near-realistic or very realistic. Here's one I love.

 

[kintsugi]

There's a fantastic guy on DA named arvalis who does amazing "realistic" Pokemon interpretations, typically of the ones that don't have clean analogues like you mentioned. I fell in love with their style after seeing their interpretation of Reshiram, and I pretty much align my headcanon with Murkrow/Honchkrow here.

Diggersby, yeah, no, I haven't approached it with a thirty-foot pole.

Incidentally, same artist as above has a neat interpretation of the Gastly line that might help with your block.

 

[canisaries]

Arvalis is great, even if some people tend to get upset about the wilder interpretations or how "ugly" some of the mon are, but I say that reality just isn't always pretty - and naturally it's just one person's take, not the absolute canon, and people are totally free to disagree on the designs.

Unfortunately, their Gastly line is too animalistic for my fic, given there's already Yamask who are ethereal rather than having biological anatomy. Love how the eyes are made to be the ears though.

 

[Beth Pavell]

arvalis is one of the better "realistic" artists in that he usually understands that realism isn't the same as spiky. I can't say I approve of his blatant copyright infringement, but that's another story.

 

[kintsugi]

I can't say I approve of his blatant copyright infringement, but that's another story.

this I’m genuinely curious about

 

[Ambyssin]

So, I guess I'm the only one on the other end of the spectrum, then? I don't imagine anything I'm writing to be realistic. If anything, I envision the Pokémon looking more or less like they do in the anime. It'd have to be that way, since things get pretty over-the-top... and some of the environments gets really surreal.

 

[Misfit Angel]

The style I imagine mine probably isn't important. I'm not the reader, after all. Someone could jump into my story and imagine them as they look in the anime and it probably wouldn't interfere with the narrative too much. Likewise, someone could see them as spiked eldritch abominations; the only real problem there would be how cuddling some of them might be with the human characters. Ditto for imagining them as just large/anthropomorphized animals, that won't interfere too much the things I write.

Though personally, I imagine somewhere between where they look in the anime and the animals they tend to be based off of. So basically, Blastoise but with scaly skin. Sentret, but with matted and rugged fur (particularly for wild ones). I don't imagine this is much different from most other authors.

 

[CrystaI]

In Arvalis' case, I would give it a negative score on my scale. That is IMO beyond actual Real-Life realism, where it is called "hyperrealism".

 

[lucarioknight56]

On the scale, I'd probably give my vision more of a 5-6. I still imagine my world in a cartoony style, but it is far more toned down, more like what you'd see in even a Studio Ghibli work (sounds weird, but it's what came to mind). I don't care to think of everything from a realistic perspective since I don't tend to give it the description it deserves, and anything more cartoony than my vision belongs to my previous fics, as they were more lighthearted in their tone than PMDUE.

 

[InfiniteBakuphoon]

Well, as far as how Pokémon look in my head, they pretty much look exactly the same as they do in the anime. However, the main reason why that's true for me is because everything in my head that has to do with Pokémon fanfic looks like the anime, including how humans look, how buildings and flora look, and what the general aesthetic of the world looks like. That remains true even for stories that don't actually take place in the anime universe at all, which means that for a story set in, say, the game universe, what would normally be either 2D sprites or 3D cel-shaded graphics essentially become "anime-ified" (for lack of a better term). That said, what I'm somewhat unsure about right now is whether or not this "animefication" should be considered simply an abstraction of fiction - or in other words: not actually reflective of what Pokémon and the world around them look like in-universe, but is nonetheless how they're projected in the real world for the sake of art style and/or sanity in the writing process - or if they actually do look that way in-universe, and that none of the characters question anything - or are even aware of anything "wrong" - because that's simply how reality is in their world.

Meanwhile, things are a little bit different when it's time to actually write stuff down. Because I typically try to write under the assumption that the reader has no idea about Pokémon or what they look like, that means that I'll also try to do a bit more than just provide a stylized, cartoony description of a Pokémon matching the stylized, cartoony aesthetic of the anime. I'll also assume that such "non-fan" readers will be using real life as their primary reference for what things look like, rather than an anime that they've never watched. One strategy I've thought about is to use the closest equivalent real-life animal as at least a partial reference for a more "realistic" level of description. So if I wanted to describe, say, Typhlosion, who is essentially a giant fire badger, I would base him first on... well, a giant badger, and then add in the more fantastical elements from there (although I'd also probably literally refer to him as a "fire badger" at times, if I'm feeling particularly lazy). However, such a strategy probably wouldn't work so well for something like, say, Pikachu, who despite being called an "electric mouse", doesn't really resemble a real-life mouse at all other than the absolute basic shape and concept of one. In cases like that, my description would probably lean more towards the simpler side of things, reflecting the simpler and more cartoony nature of the Pokémon being described.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

I don't have a consistent vision for the realism of pokémon, and I enjoy content ranging from the super-cartoonish to the true-to-life. Arvalis doesn't really do it for me, a realistic artist I prefer is ReneCampbellArt. Link chosen at random.

In my personal canon, pokémon are pretty realistic in terms of having proper fur or scales, a diet, behaviour and reproduction similar to analogous animals, and so on. However, I'm still comfortable 'idealising' them, letting them have physically impossible abilities, be more intelligent than animals and so on. I compromise.

I'm not sure there's an artist with a style that's absolutely ideal for me, but I confess to loving the art of Mewitty's Alterity for a moderately realistic take on pokémon designs that remains pretty cartoonish.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

Why is it that when people reimagine fantasy creatures to be more realistic, psychic powers are still fair game? Arvalis and Dragonriders of Pern both do this.

I don't write fanfiction very often, but I like to take the Wings of Fire approach, where I don't even try to explain how Pokémon's powers work, but they still make sense considering how it helps them survive. You can apply realism to Pokémon all you want, but it's still a world where the local wildlife can be stored in hammerspace and tamed instantly.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Well, I put limitations on hammerspace and taming is certainly not instant (after all, it's certainly not instant in the anime or manga!) so that's one point answered.

Also, 'more' realistic doesn't mean 'entirely' realistic. You can compromise between Sir David Attenborough's Pokémon Planet and the cartoonish content in the anime.

 

[Nitro Indigo]

I was trying to be funny.

 

[unrepentantAuthor]

Oh, I see. I'm afraid that wasn't clear - but I wasn't trying to put you down either if that's the impression you got!

 

[Nitro Indigo]

A better way to say what I meant is that I wasn't being 100% serious. Still, I'd watch Pokémon Planet.

(If you're interested, the wording was inspired by a conversation I had with someone on Reddit. We both had ideas for Fullmetal Alchemist AUs, I called theirs "hard sci-fi", and then they said it wasn't, because Fullmetal Alchemist is still a world where you can use geometry to coagulate thousands of souls into a gemstone that lets you warp reality, or something along those lines.)