Pokemon: Sylveon used Hyper Voice!

My Pokemon itch had not been fully scratched back in December; I still want to draw a few more.  However, I have bigger projects I would like to begin soon, so I must restrain the urge for now.  Still, I suppose I could let one Pokemon drawing out for now.  Besides, this is one Pokemon I have been wanting to sketch for a long time.

Meet Sylveon, the Fairy-type evolved form of Eevee.

 
Sylveon might be my second-favorite Pokemon introduced in the latest games: Pokemon X and Y.  She was basically the harbinger of the Fairy-type introduced in those games, being the first Pokemon of the type revealed.  Although there are not many great Fairy Pokemon yet, the type itself is fantastic, resistant to some of the most powerful offensive forces in the game (such as Dragon, Dark, and Fighting attacks), while also helping promote some of the least-used offensive types (Poison and Steel) by being weak to them.  Other people might see Fairy Pokemon as girly or overly-cute, but I am glad the type was introduced, as it can help balance other types which were previously overwhelmingly good or bad.

Sylveon in particular, however, is special.  For one thing, she is a new evolution of Eevee, bringing the number of Eeveelutions up to eight as of this generation of Pokemon.  This also makes Eevee the only older Pokemon who received a new evolution this generation, though several older Pokemon can now Mega Evolve.  She also has an ability which can change Normal attacks into Fairy attacks while also boosting their power: Pixilate.  This ability, which also has a Flying variant called Aerilate and an Ice version called Refrigerate, is probably my favorite ability introduced this generation.  I love the idea of essentially making different-typed versions of attacks without having to code an entirely new attack.  Unfortunately, Sylveon has trouble utilizing this ability when restricted to Pokemon X and Y, as she prefers special attacks to physical ones, and she does not learn too many special Normal moves.  Through some tricky (and involved) transferring, though, you can acquire a Sylveon with the move Hyper Voice, a powerful Normal attack which becomes an even more potent Fairy move in Sylveon's paws.  I wanted to depict Sylveon using this move.

Besides just liking Sylveon, I was also inspired to draw this from an image I saw which looked to be painted in faded colors.  Yellows seem to fade first from sun-bleached posters or labels, then the magentas, and cyan is usually the last to go before the black starts to fade.  While it is a shame when pictures lose their color, I must admit, this is an interesting effect.  Sylveon seemed to be a fantastic subject to test this "retro poster" look, especially since her pinks can look closer to a faded red than a magenta.

Red, in fact, became a bigger theme for this whole picture once I saw this gif of Eevee evolving into Sylveon.  A while back I saw a t-shirt where Eevee passes through a prism (like the cover for Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album) and splits into her evolutions like a rainbow: Flareon = red, Jolteon = yellow, Leafeon = green, Glaceon = cyan, Vaporeon = blue, Espeon = violet, and Umbreon = black.  However, that t-shirt was made before Sylveon existed, so she is excluded.  Thanks to that gif, I considered the possibility of Sylveon counting as the red one in this image (bumping Flareon over to orange, which is still in the accepted spectrum) and decided to roll with it.  Instead of the black outline and blue shading I had originally planned, I shifted to a dark red outline and red shading.

I also created a new brush to scatter squares around for this image to add to the effect of Sylveon's ability.  I realize the name "Pixilate" likely arose from "pixie", which is a kind of fairy.  Still, as a video game player and a digital artist, I thought it would be funny if the ability projected pixels when it converted a Normal move (such as Hyper Voice).  I think this effect could have worked better if I spaced the pixels out more, but it communicates the idea, right?

The background was a last-minute decision.  I am not sure silhouettes were the best way to go, but I have been watching and playing a lot of Donkey Kong Country lately and was inspired by the silhouette levels from Returns and Tropical Freeze.  It is meant to vaguely reflect Laverre City in Pokemon X and Y, the town which hosts a Fairy-type Gym.  I made two variants of the silhouette, one which was black, and one which overlays the gradient background.  I have another idea for an image using silhouettes, but who knows when I will start working on that one?

This was a picture full of experimentation, and while I do like how the parts each worked, I cannot tell how you like the whole.  Please let me know what works and what does not.  I had fun working on it.