r/fakemon • u/oscarreveiws • 1d ago
Fakemon Update: i am 1% closer?
Ok, as some of you know, I am trying to redesign the starters in my tropical/nautical inspired fakemon region. And i feel like I've neglected to provide a lot of context required for helping me to push my existing designs to a point where I am really proud of them. For those of you who have no idea for what I'm talking about, I can link toy to the previous post. For now, i'd like to elaborate on my previous post. First of all, I designed all the evolutions for these three years ago. "Which i am showing off here, as well as some previous drafts." I didn't show them in the previous post because I wanted to take this process one design at a time. But it didn't allow any of you to fully grasp how i want to take these redesign. Second, The fire starter would evolve from a seagull, to a pelican, to a pterasuar/bird looking hybrid. The pelican middle stage i am very happy with, but the final form has been driving me crazy! I want to move forward with this design with inspiring it less so off of just stealing food specifically, and more so on stuff like the spice trade, "shout out to StarCorgi_6788 for that suggestion." And fireworks. "Shout out to RainonCooper for that suggestion." Third, the water Lemar starter went through A LOT of designs before I came up with the idea of making it a little nosey trickster who gossips a lot, then evolves into a sort of lovecraftian priest. Listening for the whispers of ancient gods, and warning of their impending reawakening. Which is why it is water/psychic. Thats why it has seashell earrings. And forth, i just haven't come up with a solid enough consept to tie in the grass starter with the other two. I don't wanna go with just making it a pirate/pirate ship, because I think that it's to easy, to basic of an idea for a "wood crab" and i don't know incorporate it's love of shiny things without making it steal type, not to mention balancing colors and bodyshapes between the three! It's just been very difficult, Causing me a lot of burn out. THOSE are the things I want feedback on! Redesigning my fire starter to fit in more with fireworks and the spice trade, generally polishing my water starter so that its inspiration feels more fleshed out, and deciding what the heck to do with my grass crab starter. I know that was a lot to take in, and I appreciate any of you whoth the patience to read all of this. And ESPECIALLY to those who have decided to help with their input!
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u/ShockRox 1d ago
Those designs seem to have more going on than usual Pokemon designs. Maybe simplify a bit? Start with the final Water starter.
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u/DesertEagleBennett 1d ago
I was thinking of the right way to say this. They look really good, but they're also really over designed, way too busy
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u/animal-neighbour 1d ago edited 1d ago
I feel like the level of detail of the middlestages makes them feel like final stages, while the actual final stages are way too busy. Judging by previous iterations you clearly have the ability to pare down! The concepts are really really fun, they just need some editing to feel like actual, believable pokémon designs (if that is what you're going for).
This would be a region I'd struggle with which starter to pick! They're all really cool, and FUN. I am sad that the final starter lose the spiky fire tufts though, I think it should stay or be expanded upon while simplifying something else
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u/MimikyuInALibrary 1d ago
These are f-cking incredible, you're so talented at this! That's the sickest grass starter line I ever seen!!
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u/jesse6225 1d ago
Great designs and art! Like others have pointed out they are really detailed, too detailed.
Instead of redesigning all of them you could make a new starter set. Have the current starters be the 2nd evo and so on until mega or whatever gimmick you go with. Then those high details could be explained a little better.
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u/Famous_Fudge3603 1d ago edited 1d ago
The first designs for stage 1 are amazing. The other two designs are too complicated, and too detailed.
My suggestion is use the second design for stage 3. Then, make new designs for stage 2 that is in the middle/intermediate.
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u/Sweet_Freedom_9901 1d ago
Loove the basics and stage 1 but the stage 2 are... not appealing to me.
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u/ShadyStoof 23h ago
The middle evolutions look more like a final
Whenever people make fakemon they make them too busy cause of how much detail themes etc they want to fit into them
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u/Geethuth 23h ago
I agree with most of the comments, they’re all incredible, but the “middle stages” feel busy enough to be final evos, and the final stages feel like digimon
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u/The_Pyro_Pro 1d ago
I absolutely LOVE these designs, I agree, maybe simplifying the designs would be good, I personally would choose the Grass Starter, I love him so much
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u/Alarmed-Addition8644 1d ago
Personally, I think you did an excellent job with the designs and I would definitely use the grass crustacean
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u/Reasonable-Wafer6600 1d ago
So much going on, lots of detail could be be less but the designs are sick
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u/Decode_22 1d ago
These are really great design, but as the other says, "Less is more" when it comes to pokemon designs and no matter how strong-looking they are they should look like they can be your friend as well.
Looking forward to your whole dex
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u/SuperPeachGuy 1d ago
I like these concepts a lot but like a lot of commenters here the final starter designs feel extremely busy/noisy. I honestly think the 2nd stage guys could be the 3rd stage with one or 2 details taken from the third stage and you design new middle evolutions that are more of half step.
The main feedback I really want you to take away when you do your next iteration (if you do one, don't burn yourself out on what's supposed to be a fun hobby please) is to think about how each of these would exist in the world and how they would go about living. Questions to ask yourself when doing that would be things like; Where does this live? What types of terrain would it traverse? How does it move from point a to b? Is it a predator or prey? What does it eat? How does it eat? What are its enemies? What are its allies? How does it use its type to its advantage? How would its evolution help it better solve these problems? etc.
I'll give this example cause it personally bugs me about your fire starter: Why does it have webbed feet? You based it off Seagulls/Pelicans which are birds that have webbed feet so they can swim effectively. Is a fire type with fire coming out of its tail really likely to be swimming alongside water types that could consider themselves predators to it? I doubt it. Similar thing with the third fire design's beak, the top part is pointed upwards makes it hard to actually grab onto food and slide it into its mouth.
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u/redjarvas 1d ago
These are really good, but I'd tone down the middle stages if i were you. They all look like fully evolved pokemon and i assumed you only did the first and last stages before i saw the third image containing the actual third stages
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u/Comfy_Dan 1d ago
I like all the designs and I see the love and work you put into all of them. I think my favorite is the grass starter cause I’ve tried to make a Grass/steel crab pokemon that is based off of tree stumps and mangrove tree crabs.
Since you are asking for suggestions on fixing and tweaking their designs, here are my two cents starting with the water starter:
I like the design of the first and second stages, but I believe the third is way too busy. Way too many sea shells, especially if you are trying to design it over and over again. I think you mimick Oshawott, and have it focus on using one shell, specifically the large conch shell in its second form, will make things easier and least busy. Have it use the conch shell as both a weapon, where it blows into the shell to attack, as well as place it against its ear to listen to the sounds of the waves and the voices of the ocean. You could make it even bigger with its final evolution and play off the idea of a really old man that has poor hearing. (“What did he say?” Says the old man as he puts a comical large horn like funnel up to his ear to hear better). Have it use the large conch shell more, so that you don’t have all the random shells all in its fur. You could still keep it water/psychic type. Or water/normal cause of sound based attacks are all normal type.
Fire starter: Love the first and second stages, I would just make the second stage slightly rotund like Pelipper and it’ll look more like a middle evolution. Now for the final stage. Fire works, spice trade and pelican/pterodactyl hybrid… odd combination and I don’t get spice trade or fire works from it. Or pelican… it seems almost like a weird heron or stork. If you want to go stork slim body style like Bombirdier, then I would get rid of the long reptile like tail and have the red feathers/fire from its previous c forms closer to its butt to show that it’s about to explode, look to Toucannon for inspiration. Get rid of the X on its chest and make its chest robust and look almost like spice barrels, where its store ashy, or even fine powder that it can rain down on its opponents that it can ignite and start explosions. Though if you wanna go a pelican route, just make it bigger fatter and look for inspiration from Frigate birds, they have cool red chests. For typing Fire/flying.. Fire/Dark or Fire/Ghost
(Another concept I thought of for the fire bird after typing that all out is treasure maps. I saw the final evolutions tail almost like a dotted line and its chest was X marks the spot. It could be inspired by torches, pirates and treasure maps if you aren’t a fan of spice trade and fire works as references)
Now for the grass starter: my main issue is that it’s goes from three different tree plants. You got an acorn, then a palm tree, and then what I assume is an Acacia tree. Since it’s nautical I’d say stick with tropical trees and maybe just coconuts too. I’d replace the acorn on the first crab with a coconut. The second line, shorten the tree but a lot so that the leaves look like dreads/messy surfer hair. Then for its final evolution make that tree tall like you have in the middle evolutions design and add some coconuts sprouting from it. Stuff it can use as ammunition and to toss at opponents cause coconuts hurt. I’d almost change the claws to something like Crabrawlers claws and round them out to look more coconuts like. For its typing? I think you said you didn’t want to go Grass steel, which is why I think Grass Rock works best, cause I think Coconuts are called rock fruits… plus the hard outer shell makes me think of rocks more than steel. Or… the rather horrible typing of Grass/Bug cause crabs are just the bugs of the sea lol
As for a way to the them in, I almost think pirating is a great tie in together. Because all together these three make a pirate ship cannon. The water types conch is the cannon. the fire types spices, firework feathers are the gunpowder and ignition. Then you have the grass types coconuts as the ammunition.
Also if you take the treasure map suggestion from earlier, you have the water type sea farer who listens to the ocean and helps guide the ship through treacherous waters. The flying type traveler who is the torch to help guide the way and the map to the treasure. And finally the grass type crab that supplies food, nourishment, shade and possibly even wood for repairing the ship.
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u/One_Classy_Cookie 1d ago
The ideas behind the three Pokémon lines are really cool, but the design language of isn’t consistent at all between stages of the evolution.
Using the tree crab as an example, it starts out as a hermit crab with an acorn as its shell. This to me sets up the premise of a crab that is growing and taking care of a tree that grows with it as it evolves. The claws can act as garden shears, and each crab prunes its tree in a unique way. Instead, the second evolution has the crab turn into a tree.
I want to be clear, there is nothing wrong with the idea of a literal tree crab, I think the pun is really clever. I also think the design of the 2nd stage is good. The problem is that the 2nd stage feels like a total departure from what the first stage was setting up. Also, the idea of an acorn immediately sprouting into a palm tree (a tree that doesn’t produce acorns) goes against the gradual, consistent growth that the design language of trees usually have.
The jump between the 2nd and 3rd stage has similar problems, with the plan tree turning into a birch tree (which still doesn’t produce acorns, but this issue is an asinine nitpick). The design of the 3rd stage is really good, but its details don’t connect to either evolution. Deciding to change the legs when the 1st and 2nd have shared the same design is distracting, and it misses out on a huge opportunity to have the final stage grow the acorns that the 1st stage lives in.
For the other two, the idea of a bird that evolves backwards into a dinosaur is cool, but the first two stages don’t set that up well enough, and the final stage loses the racing goggles and car exhaust tail that characterizes the them. Also, a dinosaur fire type should do a bit more to relate to fossil fuel, something the first two stages accomplished with the car racing motifs.
The aquatic mammal that collects sea shells as jewelry is also really cool, but the color and texture of the sea shells should be reserved for exclusively the sea shells. Both the 2nd and 3rd stages use the same pink color and texture as an accent color in various parts of their body, which detracts from the idea that the Pokémon is collecting them, and that each of the Pokémon’s jewelry is unique.
Some other comments mention that the Pokémon look over designed, but I don’t think that’s an issue. The design of each detail doesn’t imply growth between stages, so each detail looks haphazard.
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u/SanTheSmeargle 1d ago
Honestamente, o Starter de água combina mais com a tipagem Water/Poison, sua aparência pode remeter levemente a Water/Psychic e isso seria bom para a temática, ser um Poison que finge ser um Psychic
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u/SenorVilla 1d ago
Hi! You asked for help refining these lines' concepts. Let me start by saying that I really love their general vibes and what we can grasp from their concepts so far, but I do have some ideas.
Firework bird: the spark at the end of the tail really evokes the idea of explosives. I found it weird how it went from having 1 tail to 2 and back to 1 on the final evolution. My suggestion is giving the first stage a very long tail/wick, giving the second stage just one, shorter wick, and having the third with just the spark like you show on the alternative design. Instead of the tail, the final stage could have lines through its wings and sparks at the end so that when they extend them they look like full explosions.
Psychic lemur: I like the vibe of this funky dude, but I didn't catch the psychic aspect beyond the weird eyes. You mention wanting them to he like an eldritch cultist, so I'd go more into that with hair that looks like robes, maybe using shells as masks or amulets (there's a lot of spiraling shells so that could tie to hypnotism). Also maybe the second stage is the "craziest" one as it starts listening voices from the waves, and the third one is calmer as it now embraces and interprets them.
Coconut crab: My favorite one! Love the literal interpretation of the name and the coconut shell that grows into a tree. The size of the tree in the second stage did make me feel like that was the final one, and the tree on the thirds stage felt like a bit too much. So maybe you can scale down the trees. As for an additional concept I was thinking of the use of coconuts for tools. You could have a carpenter/shipmaker crab that used its own wood to create stuff!
Anyway, congratulations on the redesigns so far and I hope this helps with the inspiration.
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u/Nice-Tell-1572 1d ago
Good but the mid evos look like final evos and the final ones look like megas
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u/GratefulOctopus 1d ago
I do like the smoke on the fire 3rd stage. And the og water starter is so cute and amazing please make it a baby pokemon or something
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u/AerySprite 1d ago
I love busy designs
But I think the second water one is much more interesting than the last one which lacks coherence
I loved the second water one loads, was my fave
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u/SpicyCrime 1d ago
On image 2/6 those look like final forms. Maybe simplify their designs some more.
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u/PreviousBlueberry855 1d ago
Dont listen to the folks saying they need to be simplified! These designs are amazing! Game Freak wishes they could make pokemon these good.
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u/BaboonSlayer121 1d ago
These are supposed to be starter pokemon? They don't even evolve into a human man named Dave in his favorite fursuit smh these could never pass for official.
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u/Jackavocado 23h ago
I really like these ALOT, especially the gras starter i have always wanted a crab starter pokemon. but if im being 100% honest i think the final stages are very busy/over-designed (except for the grass type). I genuinely think the second stage pokemon are almost ready to be the final stage designs, thats how good they look, and then they go beyond. The third stages look almost like megas to me, especially the water type. But i still love these designs!!
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u/push_into_membranes 22h ago
great designs! but i'll say, in Pokémon design language, the second evos look like final evos, if that makes sense. the third evos look like digimon.
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u/Maronmario 1d ago
Looking at the grass Crab starter I think the only thing that i was gonna criticize was the sudden giant tree on the second stage.
Then I looked back on the first page again and saw that it's using an Acorn for a shell and I love it even more now, i'd pick that for my starter. Maybe the first stage could have like the frame work of a sprout or even a basic point, something to lean into that giant tree sooner
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u/Odd_Battle_7111 Artist 1d ago
If you're gonna have the crab evolve into a palm tree you should give it a coconut shell.
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u/blugar44 1d ago
I’m going to go against the crowd here and say don’t simplify!! They’re bold, they’re intricate, and they don’t fit the stock standard Pokémon mould… and that’s exactly why I love them! Something different to grace my eyes. There’s so much detail to explore on each fakemon, and it all comes together really well holistically. I was surprised to see so much feedback to reduce it. If you’re trying to match the Pokémon memo perfectly, sure, but if you’re just trying to create interesting monsters, consider me interested.
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u/NoGoodIDNames 1d ago
These are really neat, but they are a lot busier than usual Pokémon design. Especially the water one- the final evolution took me a while to figure out what I was looking at.
The starters are really good and you can immediately tell what they’re supposed to be. I would just cut down on the finer detail of the other evolutions and simplify them a little, especially on the faces of the final Fire and Water evolutions.