Final Submission
Supporting Material:
Side view and attacks
Proposed scale chart
Rounding out my starter trio subs, this fearsome beast has come quite a way since the initial sketches over the course of mere days, I wasn't originally planning to submit to the Fire starter art subs but in the end I'm glad I changed my mind, and I'm rather proud of how he turned out! :D
Looking at the fan-theory of the Chinese Zodiac theme for the canon Fire starters, I noticed that the ones remaining are the Ox, Rabbit, Snake, Horse, and Goat, in that order. Since the Rabbit, Snake, and Goat have already been done by multiple other submissions, that left me with either the Ox or the Horse. The Hidden Ability being decided as Technician led me to pick the Horse due to its more graceful, agile nature, in league with most Technician users being rather svelte in figure. This led me to think of two mythical equines from China: the
kirin, a unicorn-like creature which is said to have a fiery mane and pierces the hearts of the unjust, and the
longma, a winged hybrid of a horse and a Chinese dragon with scales and a draconic head. To this end I combined the two to form a scaly, horned horse with a flaming mane and tail like Rapidash. The original version was far more detailed than this but feedback from the CAP Discord led me to make several changes to simplify it. First, the mane isn't as complex as with Rapidash, being more stylized but with some squiggly tongues of flame in a manner akin to depictions of fire in Chinese traditional artwork; the longma's wings also translated to a pair of fiery shoulder tufts which were combined with a collar-like stripe at the base of the neck to form an impressive fiery collar to further distinguish him from Rapidash. Second, the scales are diamond-shaped and colored like baked clay, a reference to the sculpted scale armor of the famous Terracotta Army soldiers. There were horse statues there as well, so that fits, too! And third, this design's fearsome horn, shaped like the blade of a Chinese
guandao, is placed on its nose, because horses are related to the rhinoceros family, which have sometimes been suggested as the inspiration for unicorns. That sword-like horn and the big claws on its stompy front feet are excellent weapons for a physical attacker as suggested by the current slate of stat spreads, and being horse-like, it's also got right the physique for a high speed stat that can put these weapons to use!
Additionally, the front feet were originally taloned and bird-like in a reference to hippogriffs (which is also why there's a beak at the end of the snout; there were also tusks but I simplified them to jagged mouth corners like with Skarmory), but I reduced the detail in the revised version, and not just for simplicity, either. Since both my Grass and Water subs are at least partly based on prehistoric creatures, I figured it'd make sense for this one to follow the same trend. Part of this design's inspiration is
Moropus, a genus of
chalicothere which were a group of prehistoric mammals related to horses. There was a previous iteration of this design which had a sloping chalicothere-like back, but I decided to make it straighter to keep the overall body shape more horse-like. Also of note is that since the most recent batches of starter Pokémon seem to have uniting themes such as cultural nationalities (Unova), fantasy classes (Kalos), or occupations in entertainment (Alola), I figured it'd make sense for the three starters I'm subbing to this contest to follow this trend. In this case, there are three different themes related to all three designs: prehistoric life, Asian mythical creatures, and Asian styles of media. As the Grass one is a therizinosaur/Tibetan dragon/tokusatsu monster, and the Water one is a eurypterid/ushi-oni/kabuki performer, so is this one a chalicothere/longma/clay sculpture. Genera/species of all three prehistoric creatures represented are also known from Asia, which ties back to the other themes and would make an excellent set for a region inspired by China, Tibet, or possibly even Hong Kong - but I'm probably getting very much ahead of myself with the speculation. XD
Best of luck to everyone in these three contests, and it's been a pleasure participating! And special thanks to everyone on the Discord who helped me bring out the best in this design: Quanyails, Sunfished, Golurk, Plazzap, paintseagull, Gun6, TwilightWing, Kyrads, and Magistrum!