Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Pokemon: Greninja Gaiden


Back in December 2014, I came close to a position working on art assets for an educational online project.  However, while they liked the sketches I drew for them, the job required assets made as vector graphics, and at the time, I had no experience working with vector graphics.  They had to turn me down, and in retaliation (kind of), I did the only thing which made sense: I started to learn Adobe Illustrator.

To be honest, I am still not too well-versed in Illustrator and have not used it much since then.  Aside from the 30-day trial provided (which apparently renews each year, luckily), it would cost about $20/month to use Illustrator.  I am not completely sure if I would use Illustrator enough to warrant that (although lately, I am drifting toward “yes”), so for vector-based needs, I have instead turned to a program called Inkscape.  It is free vector graphic software, and though it is not quite as intuitive as Illustrator nor has as many line style options, it gets the job done.

This time, I wanted to show one of the images I created during my trial of Illustrator, from December 2014 to January 2015.  Although this version is saved as a PNG file, I created everything in this image in Adobe Illustrator.  Behold the froggy glory of Greninja!


Greninja may be my favorite Pokemon introduced in Pokemon XY.  Greninja is the final stage of Froakie, the Water-type starter Pokemon in that game, and at this stage, this Pokemon adds the Dark-type to its existing Water-type.  This Pokemon has low defenses, but he compensates with blistering speed, being the fastest starter Pokemon in any game so far (not counting any starters who can Mega Evolve), fitting stats for the “Thief” among this set of starters (Chesnaught the Grass starter is a “Knight”, and the Fire-type Delphox is a “Wizard”).  Normally, neither of Greninja’s offensive stats reach as high as the physical power of Chesnaught nor the special potential of Delphox, but Greninja’s physical and special offenses meet a balance.  Plus, Greninja has a hidden ability which makes him horrifying: Protean (I pronounce this “PROH-tee-ann”).  A Pokemon with the Protean ability changes its type to match the type of whatever move it is about to use (i.e. he becomes a pure Ice-type when he uses Ice Beam, or a Ghost-type when he uses the Ghost move Shadow Sneak).  This ability allows him to deal heavy damage to specific targets to vanquish them swiftly, and thanks to his naturally high speed, Greninja can usually change to a new type to either strike whatever approaches him next or defend himself from the opponent’s next attack.  This frog proved to be so flexible and deadly, some competitive circles have outright banned him from standard play (in Singles, anyway).

When I was first learning Illustrator, I found a helpful tutorial for doing comic-style artworkin the program by Clay Butler, and geez, did it help.  In addition to suggesting I use lines with variable width, it also showed how overreaching where you want the line to stop can add character to the lines.  The main issue with this tutorial was how many layers occur from this method, but I suppose if you want your work to look good, this may be a necessary evil.  Inkscape gets the job done, but it does not make layers or shapes as obvious as Illustrator does.

The base colors used on Greninja are primarily from the palette of the NES, which was limited to a small number of colors but featured a lot of bold colors.  Among these bold colors, though, while the NES provided blues for days, it does not quite feature the cleanest yellows.  The closest set to yellow would probably be called “amber” generally, before we transition to chartreuse.  I basically made up the kind of pale yellow in this image by coming the brightest values for the lightest shades of amber and chartreuse, then making it as pale as the lightest orange in the palette (the RGB color for this yellow is 248, 248, 168).  Hopefully, it fits well with the blues and pinks of his body.

Greninja is not an easy Pokemon to pose, by the way.  Most images show Greninja in a crouching, ninjalike pose (this is even his standard stance in Super Smash Bros), so it is tough to accurately gauge his body.  Honestly, I think I made this Greninja a bit too bulky overall, and his head is probably a bit small.  These weird proportions may be a result of the pose I wanted to give Greninja.  Because of his ninja status and the NES colors I was using, I wanted Greninja in a similar pose to Ryu Hayabusa from the NES game Ninja Gaiden.  Specifically, the dashing pose Ryu has during the Act Introduction screen.  My desire to imitate Ninja Gaiden also led to the katakana writing in this image, for both my handle and Greninja’s Japanese name: Gekkouga.

I also wanted to add some flair to the background, so I ultimately designed a Water Shuriken meant to spin into the scene.  I went with a simple four-pointed design, although I have seen several depictions of Greninja throwing six-point shuriken.  While I think this is a neat effect, I wish I was more careful with where I began and ended the strokes for the edge and the hole to match better (both are a single stroke).

I will admit, this is not my best work, but back when I made it, this was a great experience for an early attempt at vector graphics.  I want to make more things like this in the future (and I have with Inkscape), but maybe I should spring for Illustrator to get better lines.  What do you think, reader?  Did you like this image?  Share it if you do.  If you have issues with the image, I would also like to hear those: I want to improve.

Pokemon is a tradmark of Nintendo, GAME FREAK, and the Pokemon Company.  Though I drew this picture, I claim no ownership over the characters contained in it.

No comments:

Post a Comment