Gotta cache em all

I'm super excited to present these dumb characters I've been working on for the last few months! They are all in their final year of high school but more importantly share a deep passion for the world of Pokemon. I haven't decided if they share a class or instead met through... The Pokemon Club.

Cedric is a meticulous academic with no sense of humour. His wardrobe is entirely composed of suits.
Bentley is probably the only TCG aficionado left alive. His temper gets him in trouble often.
The volcanic rivalry between these two culminates in them furiously making out next to the punch on prom night.

Jin is the resident grapevine and utterly revels in it, whereas the big two are allegedly above such talk. He's super chill and friendly and basically everyone likes him. I have absolutely no bias on this topic. Bentley has a restraining order against him.
Evan is caustic in his sarcasm which tends to put him at odds with the people who don't get it. He is a chronic procrastinator but will produce only the best.
Daphne is a terrifying omnidisciplinarian and no one would be surprised if she got degrees in everything. She obeys only the law of cold hard rationale. Sometimes she is heard laughing megalomaniacally.
Sunny is adorable and will take all your money. Granted she works incredibly hard, but your money is doomed. Everyone has bought something from her whether they publically admit it or not.

Bastille and Sampson were bumped up three years and this manifests in their complete misunderstanding of all social situations. Bastille is the calm one and casually compiles profiles of everyone around him. Sampson is the bratty one and makes sure the older kids constantly remember where he's at.

Any resemblance to real persons living or dead is... what's the word again?... coincidence. Yes, all connections one might possibly make are not only coincidence, but also happenstance, circumstance and of independent occurence. One hundred percent.

► ☆ USE TELEPORT? (Y/N) ☆


'tree pokemon' / 'lockers' / 'merchandise' / 'banlist' / 'crowdsourcing'

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<sub>A select few of my friends will know I immensely love gijinka-fying pokemon, though I don't do it nearly enough. It takes a very particular inspiration, I feel, to create a gijinka which really stands out. Since about three quarters of my watchers will have no clue what's going on I must give in and confirm that yes, these characters are all based on pokemon websites.
It may be hard to believe, but the influence is vital: the personality of each site, or whatever I thought most interesting to fit to them, pushes them beyond what I'd think up for pokemon alone! I'm very happy with them, or as happy as one can be when devising fanart for practically the worst concept possible.

I came up with these guys midway through my first uni semester, and since then they've taken over almost all my scrap paper. A significant amount of that time was spent finetuning: I worked super hard on my character design, pulling from as wide a range of shapes and silhouettes as I could. I really do believe that it's the result of pushing myself for years and years! So there's a little motivational story for you.
The picture itself took several hours a day, for about two weeks, spread across the last month. It's easily the most intensive piece I've done yet. The reason is simply quantity, rather than quality: drawing these characters together is even harder than what they add up to as a whole, because I have to constantly adjust for height and general consistency. I have never been so thankful for the select and move tools.
Apart from that, celshading isn't particularly strenous for me, and the background clearly doesn't have very much put into it. Concerned that the highlights are overdoing it but without them it looks flat, so ergh. I'm quite miffed that the whole thing has less impact than I hoped, though after staring at it for weeks on end, I'll have to concede I'm just double-guessing myself.

If anyone figures I'm yet another artist flinging themselves into a new style (as is all the rage these days), you'll have to perish the thought! I specifically decided to work much more cartoony for this series, not only to simplify and get better practice on my design work, but because it fits the mood I've got for them. I couldn't resist real-ifying them anyway, and I may post the relevant doodles at some point.
I also have some comic strips bouncing around in my mind... though I can't guarantee I'll get to those.

If anyone is interested in seeing other websites bastardised, leave your suggestions for me! I have some additional characters cooked up already, and depending on their popularity I'll draw them too (with less effort).
Apart from that I have readjusted the proportions like four times so if you have further critique to offer on that or the general design work, as always I would love to hear it.

That isss probably all! I was hoping to draw more over my semester break, but it's nearly over and this basically took the entire time. Next holidays, then.</sub>