Art Community: animation, concept art, illustration, pixel art, etc. Video games, anime and more. Follow our alt account for retro nostalgia: @MemoryCardFiles
Decades later the same design sense still shows up on cards, in the anime and in Smash. Simple silhouettes, strong personality and just enough weirdness so they never feel generic.
Favorite Pokémon design of his? I’m still partial to the original Gengar. And yours?
Artist of the day: Ken Sugimori
One of the people who quietly shaped how an entire generation pictures monsters. Co-founder of Game Freak and the main artist who locked in the look of the original 151 Pokémon. A lot of what we still think of as “classic Pokémon art” starts with him.
His early pieces had that soft watercolor feel, a little Toriyama in the lines, but clean enough that every Pokémon read clearly even as a tiny sprite. He kept refining them for years: art directing later generations and making sure the official illustrations stayed consistent no matter who else was sketching.
It’s easy to forget how much of the visual language we take for granted came from those early decisions.