I generally limit my big, extravagant purchases to concert tickets and more takeout than I should have in one week, but one thing I will always have funds in my wallet for is the occasional artist commission. Social media has put artists on bigger platforms than ever before, with some incredible works circulating and going viral every day, and nothing hits harder than finding an account on Twitter run by an artist who almost never posts, speaks a language you don’t, and whose feed is exclusively the most gorgeous pieces of artistry you’ve ever laid eyes on. But while many of us have engaged in the retweeting and story-sharing of these works, not enough people out there are ponying up the cash for a commission, and I’ll tell you that ever since I realized that money could be exchanged for goods and services and a piece of art I’d conceived in my mind could become real, I’ve been looking for artists, especially in the Pokémon space, to ping (and pay) to draw my favorite little guys.
More than a lot of video game franchises, Pokémon is a deeply personal experience. Everyone has their favorite monsters that they’ve grown attached to over the years, and since screenshotting is a relatively new addition to Nintendo platforms, historically there haven’t been a lot of opportunities to get group shots of your all-time faves, as modern games in the series no longer include the full range of critters. Photo mode has only become a standard in recent games like Scarlet / Violet and Legends: Z-A, so as a kid, I used Microsoft Paint to put together the old DS and Game Boy sprites to create group shots, often with whatever random trainer sprite I was feeling connected to back then. I was plugged into the series, but at that young age I definitely didn’t have the money or resources to find and pay artists, so I made do.
In the genAI era, a lot of artists are saying they’ve received fewer commissions as people are flocking to slop machines to make the ugliest possible versions of their art, fast and cheap. Viral trends in which people share mockups of their Pokémon teams are flooded with soulless, plagiarized amalgamations of work by better artists. I’ve collaborated with several Pokémon artists over the years, and it turns out that having a person you can talk to and ideate with allows for the art to reflect nuances a machine isn’t going to know how to implement, and no amount of prompt editing will capture quite what you’re going for.
The first time I ever commissioned a Pokémon piece, I was a writer at games and culture site Fanbyte. I was writing about the Dexit controversy, and how losing the ability to transfer every Pokémon into Sword and Shield required me to come to terms with what it meant to leave some parts of your life behind. I was planning on moving out of my small hometown at the time, so I was feeling introspective about having to say goodbye to old friends in order to have new experiences. I put out a call on social media for someone to illustrate Raichu and me, solemnly overlooking the Galar city of Motostoke, and artist Matt Taylor responded. I later asked him to draw a Persona 5 tattoo that I have on my arm, so I trust him with my artistic life.
As the years have gone on, I’ve started gradually adding new art to my collection, asking artists for their interpretations of my favorite Pokémon, letting me see them as a unit with characteristics and group dynamics I’d always imagined but that the games themselves never could quite capture.
Julesdrawz, who has a really distinct style similar to that seen in the cutscenes for underrated DS puzzler Pokémon Trozei, was the first artist I ever asked to draw me and my team of six, and one of the cool parts of seeing my team together in one piece was that it managed to capture aspects of their personalities I’d never actually seen reflected in the games. Raichu, who I’ve often envisioned as a bit of a smarmy shit, is being a sassy little guy in the art, Torterra’s stoicism is captured as he grounds the whole team while I stand on his earthy shell.
Welcome to Exp. Share, Kotaku’s Pokémon column in which we dive deep to explore notable characters, urban legends, communities, and just plain weird quirks from throughout the Pokémon franchise.
Lately, since the reveal of Raichu’s Mega Evolutions last year, I’ve been on a new artist commission kick. The new form helped me see my favorite in a new light, and inspired me to seek out artists who could draw the superhero-like mouse being cool and shit alongside the rest of the team. I recently found an artist named Gustavo Zanin who draws in the style of the iconic Ken Sugimori watercolor art from the ‘90s, and he did a great job capturing even more modern Pokémon in the retro style.
Those are only a few of the several artists I’ve hit up over the years, and each time I’ve gotten even a sketch back, it’s helped me feel connected to a series that has been a stabilizing force over the past 30 years. I’ve got custom Pokémon cards from Duke Hoover sitting on my shelf that have become precious keepsakes, helping give shape to my Pokémon fandom which I long felt I had to internalize rather than actually see made real. PSaber made my team look super badass and battle-ready in a super-rad group shot. I’ve got all these wonderful pieces, and I’m sure I’ll have found another artist whose work I’ll add to my collection by the end of the year. It’s genuinely one of the coolest feelings seeing good art come together. Everyone has a different connection to Pokémon and the monsters they’ve met, and having someone capture my own connection to them in art has made me feel closer to these critters than ever.
