As an aspiring Concept Artist for video games and movies, I want to really go through the games and see who made the work I love so I can have mangers understand my art from inspirational context. While Pokemon is not a major inspiration, it still probably has played a role in influencing me. So I've been going through GameFreak's staff for video games, specifically the art department, and.... I've been disappointed. From XY and ORAS, Ken Sugimori was the Art Director. He was also the character art director for DPPT, Gold and Silver, Red and Blue, as well as for Ruby and Sapphire. Basically all the generations except Gen 7, he was in charge of the Art Direction. And in BW he co-starred in as the Director alongside Takao Unno, who did most of the games Ken Sugimori didn't direct. ( Before I go any further, this post will primarily focus on the Art direction, but I'm sure you can apply what I done here to other areas of Game Design. ) Only in Gen 7 the two people weren't the directors, but they still played a pivotal role.
So why is this a problem? The quality of Pokemon Designs and overall art is starting to show. Remember how in Black and White several of the Pokemon were clearly designed as parallels? Like Roggenrola=Geodude, Klink=Magnemite, Tauros=Boufallant? Well on Bulbapedia, I checked people like Reiko Tanoue, Keiko Mortigsu, and Saya Tsuruta, people who didn't work on Pokemon Games in Diamond and Pearl, all I saw was illustrated cards. My guess is that there handed a finished Pokemon Design and are just told to draw the official art or some minor Illustration showing off the features like Pokemon Amie. The primary designers were Ken Sugimori, Yuskuke Omura, Atsuko Nishida, most of which were designing since Red and Blue. But the most jarring example of proof " running out of ideas. "would be Xerneas and Yveltal. Sugimori has always been the one to design the cover legendaries, so when he encountered Artist's Block, he had to give the designs to Yusuke Ohmura to finish up the design before resuming them. And that artist's block is also why Mega Flygon never became a thing. As a result, Pokemon's character design quality is also starting to reduce: There are much less Pokemon, partially because of the sheer amount, but also because the developers are probably suffering from a form of Artist's block, but who could blame them? They've been doing it for 20 years. It may also explain why Mega Evolutions and Alola Forms became a thing: They save a lot of time designing since they are already have a base design. Remember how I said people were upset at Necrozma for ripping off Kyurem? I think another fear people have is that fusion is going to become a new “ gimmick “ that’s now cool at first, and it’s slowly becoming a reality since Necrozma does it. What if the Gen 8 legendaries can fuse with one another? And then Gen 9? And the Generations 10? Fusion was cool at first, but now its very clearly a cliche now.
As for the regions, I'm content for the most part, since GF does their research when they do regions. My major complaint though it seems to be from the tourist's point of view- specifically Japanese. Masuda said
here that France was chosen because it has strong connection to Japan, primarily for Anime and the Japan Expo. So in cities like Lumiose it’s full of Cafes and Shops, but when you contrast that with Saffron City, another Meteropolis, and you’ll see the differences; There are buildings where people live, and much less tourism attractions. It’s based off Tokyo another Meteropolis in similar vain of Paris, but there should be just as many tourist attractions right? But no. Alola’s worse, since there are tons of hotels, travel bureaus, and tourists everywhere: Aside from Z-Move lore, there’s not much history. But who could blame them? GF is primarily Japanese, so what they do seems ok in the eyes of Japan Audience. At least they haven’t made offensive portrayal yet, unlike Disney.
Now we all just criticized Disney for taking Solo for granted as well as cultural appropriation, but they do also do a lot more differently than GameFreak when it comes to making their Animated movies ( Before I'm going any further, yes I gonna be comparing to video games. Why? Because a lot of components of video games, like Computer Animation, Storyboarding, Visual Effects, Scriptwriting, Concept Art etc. can be applied to movies in the same fashion as video games. ) For starters, Disney allows internships which allows students to work with professionals when there making their
movies which means working with workers on the
actual movie product. One of the schools I've applied to has representatives from Disney come to the campus to recruit
Majors from their Illustration program for interns at Disney. GF doesn't do that. I googled internships at GF, and this is what I
found. No internships offered.
As for their Job descriptions ( I used Google Translate. ):
1. HR recruitment
2. Information Management
3. Game Programmer
4. CI programmer
5. Planner
6. Modeler/Animator/Rigger
7. Draft Planning
8. Graphic Designer: Map
9. Motion Production Management.
There are a couple more, but I think its kind of a clear what the idea of the new staff role is supposed to be. Its primarily just programming and Animation, which is more like giving parts of a car and being told to assemble the car from the already created pieces. ( I'm not saying that these are unimportant, it just shows how afraid GF is of letting the younger staff take in charge of creation. ) The
Staff of Let's Go games show a lot of non-Japanese people work on the animation section, which I guess is from these ads.
As for Disney, its a bit harder to navigate because Disney is so huge, and while there were more human officers, engineers, and production managers more than art jobs, there were some notable examples ( I'm sure there are more opportunities, haven't gone through all of Disney's branches. ):
Interns:
1. Intern CG Artist Summer of 2019
2. Intern, Story Artist Summer 2019
Jobs:
3. Character TD
4. Story Artist
These Summer of 2019 are courses designed to prepare students for their jobs at Walt Disney Animation Studios, and in addition new recruits for the jobs sections go through
Apprentice Program from a mentor to ensure they know the culture and expectations of the studios. Not to mention, Disney does not require the applicants to be fluent in English, in contrast to GF, which requires Japanese to be considered for the job. As a result, the diversity in Japan is not heterogenous. And it does influence on presentation, but before I go into that, I want to show off how open Disney is for their positions. Look at these crews for these films.
1.
Tangled ( 2010 )
2.
Wreck-It-Ralph ( 2012 )
3.
Frozen ( 2013 )
4.
Big Hero 6 ( 2014 )
5.
Zootopia ( 2016 )
6.
Moana ( 2016 )
7.
Ralph Breaks the Internet ( 2018 )
See how different they are per film?
Not to mention the art directors have been ( mostly ) different.
1. David Goetz, Dan Cooper
2. Ian Gooding, Mike Gabriel
3. Michael Giamo
4. Scott Wanatabe
5. Matthias Lechner
6. Andrew Edward Harkness
7. Ami Thompson, Matthias Lechner
See how all the Art Directors have been primarily different? Out of all these, only one pair shared directors. It makes a huge difference since every art director is different, each invites a different crew that is not only very different and each from different cultural backgrounds, so Disney has high expectations to create a film that is appropriate to everyone, and also has a meaningful message for each film that is global: What it means to be a hero, The power of sister bonds, the harm of prejudice, etc. In Pokémon, the only message that seems to get out to the audience is to got to catch em all and be the very best. I mean there sure motifs like Beauty in XY or tradition in GS, but those are subtle and have nothing much to do with the players primary goal.
As for culture mimicking, Pixar did it perfectly in their Coco film. The developers went to live with a family in Mexico before the Day Of the Dead to ensure their film wouldn’t be opposed of cultural appropriation. When they went to live with locals, they learned that family is highly valued, and the Day of the Dead is about remembering your family through fiestas and offering. ( Contrary to popular belief, it’s not anything like Halloween. ) They even went out of their way to hire a Mexican Cast for the entire film, and it does make a difference because the people really know what it’s like to live there and can properly relate to the roles.
The GameFreak analogy would be that instead of just having Japanese people go to France to ‘understand the region.’, they should also have people who lived in France help design it, since they would understand the culture there much better. Of course Kalos is not an exact replica of France, but you can tell that GF wanted to show you the culture of France, but the way they executed it makes it a Japanese tourist’s Point of view, with lots of cafes, resturants, and boutiques, all things that tourists do in France. Do French people give discounts for being fashonible? Or kick you out for not being fashionable enough? The way GF presents makes me feel like fashion is everything there. But there’s more France than just fashion. Like how France has one of the highest tolerances for religion and thus a popular have for minorities, but no mention of it in XY.
So what I’m trying to say is this: I believe the quality of the games and failure of any dedicated advancement in gameplay because the same people have been directing and designing the for the last 20 years, and their reluctance to let new people direct games and design Pokémon is starting to take a toll. But the most infuriating fact is that GF can make their projects more accessible. The reason I bring Disney and Pixar into this is because they make high quality films and constantly offer jobs and internships to work on major projects. And it’s not like GF can’t afford to do anything that Disney does. Pokémon is the world’s biggest media franchise, so in fact, they arguably have more influence on the world than Disney, especially considering Pokémon Go brought people of all ages, whether they knew Pokémon before to the franchise. Yet, the franchise remains homogeneous, secretive, and traditional as ever. And the effects are starting just show in the rating and sales. USM had the same rating as SM, despite having more content. Pokémon Let’s Go sale had only hit 4 million in UK isn’t good either. Focusing primarily on Japan and making the rest of the world feel like extras is going to hurt the franchise in the long run because Pokémon is now a global phenomenon, not just a Japanese one.
EDIT: I have hopes that younger staff will make a breakthrough for the 2019 games, but as long as these traditional roles and values stay, I doubt we'll get Pokemon version of Breath of the Wild.
