Pokemon: Mewtwo in the Unknown Dungeon

ANNOUNCEMENT!
Before I discuss this picture, I would like to announce here I will be filming a live stream on my Twitch channel: RyuKageChroma!  This Sunday, February 21st, I will be recording the Unknown Dungeon in Pokemon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition, an optional dungeon you can only access after clearing the game's main story.  Other than possible future streams (not likely) where I attempt to obtain every Pokemon I can with a single copy of the game (and a minigame which is nigh-impossible to see), the Unknown Dungeon is the last thing I have to show in Pokemon Yellow.  I will attempt to capture the subject of today's drawing without utilizing the Master Ball, which will probably take a while and many attempts.  This is happening this coming Sunday at 7pm (Eastern Time).  I hope to see you there.

Click here to see my Twitch channel: RyuKageChroma, which also features various highlights from some of my past streams.

Over the past year, I started streaming gameplay footage on Twitch occasionally, most often for Pokemon Yellow: Special Pikachu Edition.  Originally, I was doing this to have a stockpile of footage from this version of the game in case I ever recorded footage for a video playthrough of the original Red and Blue games.  Over time, though, it became something I could anticipate doing during the week.  I was involved with the Drama Club in both high school and college, but this is the closest outlet I have to that kind of performance.  After I finish Pokemon Yellow, I have a few other ideas for streaming, some other games I want to play, and maybe some guest commentators.  If you decide to watch, then I hope you like what you hear.

As for Pokemon Yellow, by now, I have played through all of the main story of the game and caught 70 different species of Pokemon along the way.  I have even visited two of the game’s optional dungeons and captured the ice and thunder birds residing in them (as well as their less-impressive fiery cousin who roosts slightly off the beaten path in the final required dungeon).  However, there is one optional dungeon I have yet to explore, because I could not enter this one until after I beat the main story: the Unknown Dungeon (a.k.a. “Cerulean Cave”).  This cave is filled with narrow passages and the highest-level wild Pokemon you can find in the game, including some which are usually difficult to find otherwise.  Most importantly, on a small island residing in the deepest pit of the Unknown Dungeon, an unspeakably-powerful Pokemon waits to challenge any fool who dares to venture so deep into its lair.

They call this creature “Mewtwo”.

At some point before the story of Pokemon Red / Blue / Yellow begins, a group of scientists investigating Guyana found Mew, a Mythical Pokemon whose DNA supposedly contains the DNA of every existing Pokemon species.  In the games, these scientists found a pregnant Mew and tampered with the DNA of its baby, while the cartoon shows the scientists extracting Mew’s genetic code from its eyelash and attempted to clone it.  Either way, the modifications made to the newborn changed it to a degree where it no longer resembled Mew, thus they dubbed the newborn “Mewtwo”.  However, Mewtwo rebelled against its creators and destroyed the mansion where it was created.  The cartoon depicts this as Mewtwo’s existential crisis, while the games claim the scientists could not “curb its vicious tendencies”.  In the games, Mewtwo hides somewhere it would be unlikely to see humans, waiting patiently to use its incredible psychic power to drive intruders away, or to death.

Because of its incredible power and its aversion to humans, Mewtwo has become one of the most popular Pokemon from the first generation of the series, and it remains in many forms of media as a subtle but deadly threat to any aspiring heroes in the Pokemon world.  Even in the Gen 1 games, Mewtwo is the most difficult monster to capture.  Unlike the other legendary Pokemon you can catch in RBY, Mewtwo has a full set of moves: an incredibly powerful Psychic attack, a move which boosts its Defense, a move which never misses its target, and a move which HEALS UP TO HALF OF ITS MAXIMUM HEALTH!  Thanks to Mewtwo’s high power and speed, as well as being a Psychic-type Pokemon (a type few Gen 1 Pokemon could tolerate on Defense or hit well on offense), Mewtwo was such a terror, even Nintendo banned it from most competitions.  Since then, it frequently appears in other games either as some kind of antagonist or an incredibly-difficult challenge to the player (or both).  Because of this, I often see Mewtwo as a looming threat in the background, judging others on their power, waiting to test itself against tougher opponents to prove none can best it.  If you can overcome this scary alien cat thing with psychokinetic powers and psychopathic tendencies, I am willing to call you a “Pokemon Master” (whatever that still means).

Although I do have an image of Mewtwo already, I wanted to create a better one especially for the day when I finally end my Pokemon Yellow stream.  What better way to end a look at the Gen 1 games than with its ultimate monster?

I decided to experiment with a different coloring method for Mewtwo, and I utilized a new tool to accomplish this easily: Copic colors.  Copic markers are a set of alcohol-based markers supposedly used by manga artists for colored images, where each color they produce has an alphanumeric code, such as “R24”.  The letter identifies the color family (R is red, G is green, BV is blue-violet, E is earth colors, etc.), the first number is a subset of that color (kind of like a saturation), and the last number tells how bright the color is (low numbers are light / pale, high numbers are dark / vivid).  Using these codes, artists can identify colors which can make an image with appropriate midtones, highlights, and shading for their pictures: pick some colors with matching letters and first digits but differing last digits, like V12, V15, and V17.  Shading with markers is difficult in real life (which is why I usually prefer to color with colored pencils), but these codes help the process immensely.

This is clearly a drawing I made digitally in Photoshop, though, so why address real-life markers if I did not use them here?  Because Copic has also released their available colors online as color swatches you can add to Photoshop or Illustrator.  Thus, I downloaded the palette and used the colors for this image.  I wanted to see how they compare to how I usually color, so instead of utilizing multiply layers for coloring like I normally do, shadows are simply the darker swatch painted over a lighter one, all set as “normal” layers.

Below is what Mewtwo looked like before I blackened the shadows for dramatic effect.  The body was made from Pale Heath, Pale Lilac, and Mallow (V000, V12, and V15 respectively), while the tail and eyes were from Ash Lavender, Pale Blackberry, and Eggplant (V22, V25, and V28).  In each set, the middle color was the base, and I chose lighter or darker ones from that family where I could (or the V0x line if I could not).  This should give you an idea of how Copic coloring is supposed to work.

When I made my original image, I set Mewtwo in the ruins of a building, with the background implying smoke.  This time, however, I decided to set Mewtwo in the Unknown Dungeon, since that was where most people would have met this creature first and where I would meet it in Pokemon Yellow.  However, there are several iterations of this dungeon: the layout changes a lot between different versions of the game.  While reading about the Unknown Dungeon, I learned the layout seen in HeartGold and SoulSilver took inspiration from different iterations.  Apparently, although the top and middle floors where designed like they were in the Japanese Red and Green games, the bottom floor had a similar design to the Yellow Version.  If I went with the FireRed and LeafGreen aesthetic, I would have drawn greenish-yellow (mossy?) walls and gray stone floor.  However, since Mewtwo waits on the bottom floor in every game, I decided to draw the cave as it looked in HeartGold and SoulSilver: purple stone, greenish-blue water, dark, and green crystals for some reason.  If HeartGold’s deepest pit was inspired by Yellow (the game I am playing), then this is most appropriate, especially with the idea of hiding Mewtwo mostly in shadow.

Finally, I wanted Mewtwo to prepare some kind of attack in his raised paw, and I eventually decided on something resembling a Shadow Ball, a move Mewtwo sort of introduced in the first movie.  I wanted the attack to have some kind of glow to demonstrate Mewtwo’s power and to illuminate the shadows a bit more, but I had trouble deciding on what color to make it glow: purple / magenta, blue, or yellow.  Psychic attacks are often portrayed as purple in the video games, Mewtwo’s attacks in the movie often glowed blue, and I could’ve gone with yellow because the Psychic-type gym in RBY was located in Saffron City (named after a golden color).  It was a tricky decision because Psychic-type attacks are portrayed vaguely; I am not always sure what form different ones do or should take.  Eventually, I settled on a blue-cyan glow because of Mewtwo’s movie portrayal and because the Unknown Dungeon is also often called “Cerulean Cave”, due to its proximity to Cerulean City (all of the towns and cities you visit in Kanto are named after colors).

The Copic colors seem a little paler than I expected them to be, though they probably are not accurately emulated on the computer screen compared to the real-world ink.  For a pale-colored creature like Mewtwo, though, this works just fine.  I would like to try coloring an image of one of my own characters in these colors to see the comparison.  Maybe Sakura could work with these kinds of colors.

“We dreamed of creating the world’s strongest Pokemon. [pause] And we succeeded.” – Dr. Fuji’s last words, Pokemon: The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back

I hope you enjoyed this image of one of Gen 1’s most memorable and popular Pokemon.  This February is the 20^th anniversary of the Pokemon series, so I would like to do a lot to celebrate that milestone.  Of course, I will add my own creations to the blog, as well, because I want to develop my own stories and characters, too.  Thank you for reading, and remember: only use your Master Ball when you meet a truly insurmountable challenge.