2nd Place, Art Heroes Pocket Monster Challenge
It’s no secret how much of a geek I am about comics, toys, cartoons etc. so I’ve known about Pokemon since the property launched in the states back in the 90’s. Used to have to elbow my way through legions of Pokemon fans there barricading the path to the counter at my favorite comic shops just to get my weekly books. Time and exposure eventually make the characters and creatures of Pokemon hard to resist but it wasn’t until the advent of my first born child that my journey with Pokemon truly began..
While visiting family one summer we were looking for something to keep our daughter occupied after a long day in the sun so my wife and I could at least sit down in one spot for a moment of reprieve. Movies are great for that and it just so happened to be when Detective Picachu was released in theaters. Didn’t expect to like that movie, let alone enjoy it, but I was looking forward to sitting peacefully in an air conditioned movie theater for a little bit. Little did we know that all of us would walk out fans.
It was the way the animators and modelers got Picachu’s brows to furrow that pulled me right in. The very next day my daughter and I started playing Pokemon Go! ever since and haven’t stopped.
Hits me right in the jellies every time.
Pokemon has become one of the many bonds I share with my children, and as such I’ve learned more about Pokemon through interacting with my kids. From books to toys to cartoons and games we’ll chase down every avenue of Pokemon entertainment together. All of this gave me the fuel I needed to toss my hat into a recent online competition by Art Heroes.
Art Heroes held a five day open contest to create an original Pocket Monster style character that looks and feels like it belongs in the world of Pokemon to be judged by a panel of amazing professional 3D artists. Art Heroes provided a design brief outlining the rules and guidelines for participating in the contest and I was eager to throw my hat into the ring on this. The rules were simple, pick a buzzword to design around and use one of their provided props as part of the creature’s design. Everything outside of the prop had to be an original concept.
Image courtesy of Art Heroes
This is exactly the kind of thing I love to do.
Without hesitation my wonderful wife gave me a hall pass to spend a few hours taking a shot and I immediately lept into action. First things first I pulled up the brief and read through the rules again carefully and mentally noted the key points to bear in mind while designing. The first thought that went through my head was to determine what type of Pokemon I wanted to make.
Image courtesy of Art Heroes
For me personally I always gravitate towards the ghost type Pokemons. Halloween is a big deal for me and the ghost type Pokemon speak my language. That gave me my starting point to build from. Then I considered the “buzzword” of choice, this was a little more tricky as there are so many possibilities there, however, my wife and I had just started to re-watch Stranger Things in anticipation of season four’s release. We were about halfway through season three when Jim has to bring the Russian agent they captured a 7-11 Slurpee and my brain quickly latched onto that shape and color combination as a point of interest. This also triggered a response to the “buzzword” portion of the recipe: brain-freeze.
Image courtesty of Netflix’s Stranger Things
Who didn’t love an ice-cold sugar syrup drink on a hot day from a convenience store when they were a kid (or as an adult)? I grabbed my sketchbook and scribbled out a quick rough sketch and that was when the name “slurpholet” hit me. This was a good start, and I started to picture small wormhole like creature that would appear and nibble on the brains of the unsuspecting. I sketched out its other forms and named them “Jawsmos” and “Unimaw.” It felt like it was all coming together, until it didn’t. Looking at the selection of props and what I had sketched I was back to square one but I loved the idea of the play on slurpee. Then I laughed, it was perfect since many Pokemon have amazing word combination names that allude to their abilities or I just combined slurp and eat and got “slurpeat” and started to picture a creature that disguises itself as a cold treat. Boom, back into action…
Monsters are always great when you can take something benign and give them an unexpected twist to emphasize the horror aspect of their nature. What I find amusing about ghost type Pokemon are their horrific backstories or behaviors that contrast their cute yet still sinister outward appearances. I thought, wouldn't it be great if this monster disguised itself in such a way to lure its prey towards them long enough to flip the script when it's too late? Hence the “you don’t drink it, it drinks you” I added to its bio card that still makes me laugh.
When I began visualizing Slurpeat I considered its behavior and nature. It's a patient hunter that entices its prey through the effective use of camouflage. A quick Google image search later and I had an array of reference imagery to inform my decision making. First thing I did was gather images of ghost type Pokemon followed by an image search of Pokemon eyes. I wanted to leverage the existing visual language of Pokemon to guide my design choices. The next thing I did was search for Slurpee cup images from the 80’s which then caused me to consider color.
The reference images I had up while sculpting, courtesy of their respective creators/owners.
Color became an interesting avenue for me here, and it's also the moment when I actually decided to go dual-type for Slurpeat. I thought wouldn’t it be fun if I used the colors of the Pokemon type icons to season aspects of Slurpeat’s form? The concept began to expand when I thought what if Slurpeat is primarily a ghost type Pokemon and its secondary type could be determined by region, thus creating variety to the species. So in theory the secondary color type could be used to indicate what region a Slurpeat is from as well as indicate its secondary type power set. For my final render I went with Ghost and Ice type since naturally a secondary type of Ice just fits a creature disguised as a Slurpee.
At this point it was a race against time, I only had a few short hours to get cracking. Since my base concept is basically a cup with frozen sugar poured into it I took a look at the provided props and tried to figure out which one would best pair with my design. Initially I tried using the tentacle, I thought I could incorporate it in such a way that it might be its true form dripping over the sides. After a few explorations of that option I felt like that was in danger of becoming a time suck and re-evaluated the prop selection. I had been staring at my reference imagery on and off again and a connection was made between the lid of a Slurpee and the potential for the spiked shell, like maybe in the Alola region Pokestops sell icee drinks with stylized lids? Perfect match in my opinion and helps define Slurpeat’s silhouette.
Image courtesy of Art Heroes
Then I thought it was funny that Pokestops would be selling these and decided this one was flavored “Gengar Grape” and moved on before my mind chased that Pokemon flavor pun tangent…
The shell proved to work beautifully and also helped anchor my sculpting decisions a bit. Adding in the straw helped sell it, and also became a clever reversal by also making that out to be its tongue. I built and rebuilt Slurpeat a handful of times, simplifying the form more and more with each iteration. Since I kept my pieces simple I felt like posing it in a few different states to show how it might transition from a neutral position to an aware state to its attacking form to help visually tell its story. I still think I can go cleaner with its shape, and I’ve also thought out its other three evolutions that I will sculpt as soon as time provides.
Yes I will be sculpting out its other two forms. When I was sketching out my idea my mind was also considering its ability to evolve. “Slurpeat” came up naturally and quickly, and since it references a cup my mind began to wander into the realm of what’s next? I thought, what's bigger than a cup? A container. So its second evolution is going to be called “Gooliter” and I’ll be using the shape language of 2 liter bottles to guide that one. Then I thought ok what’s the next size up? A keg. This one was a little tricky to think through but in times like that I fire up the thesaurus and start exploring. Another type of keg would be a barrel yet no word play was happening with that association so I used barrel as a starting point in the thesaurus and one of the options that stood out is Cask. Cask is great and my mind almost immediately went to the old mythical creature called the Basilisk. As Basilisk can petrify anyone that looks upon it and I thought that’s perfect, fits the bill for an ice type. So its final form is going to be called “Caskalisk.”
This challenge was incredibly fun and I wound up tying for second place. I can not thank the good people at Art Heroes enough for always putting out these types of creative sprints. If you don’t know about them Art Heroes offers excellent training from industry professionals as well as being a great online resource on YouTube for tutorials and insights. I am truly grateful and honored to have been awarded second place for my design and I can’t wait to share the continued progression of this character.
