Team Chroma Logo

PAX East is fast approaching, and I will be attending Friday, April 22 and Saturday, April 23.  Therefore, I should get cracking on whatever new projects I want to tackle within the next week.  I have also decided to upload multiple posts within the next week.  I would like to show at least two posts, but if I can do three, that would be fantastic.  I do have other drawings I want to make, though, so we will see what happens from here.

Today, I am showing a logo I made a month or so before Pokemon X and Y were released (I guess September 2013).  I drew this with the intention of forming some kind of guild to discuss and explore the game, an aspiration which did not pan out.  Still, at least I made a cool logo for the group: "Team Chroma".

In every Pokemon game, there is a group which acts as the antagonists of the game known as "Team [Insert Word Here]" - "Rocket" in Kanto and Johto, "Galactic" in Sinnoh, "Plasma" in Unova, "Flare" in Kalos, and both "Magma" and "Aqua" in Hoenn.  They show up throughout the game nudging the plot forward through underhanded actions.  "Team Chroma" started as an idea for one of those, but with a bit of a twist.  Team Chroma would antagonize the player, but their true goal would be to stop a more evil group known as Team Gris (the French word for "gray") from freezing their country.


Team Chroma has two thematic elements going for them: colors and swords.  The sword part came from a set of Pokemon introduced in Pokemon Black and White known collectively as the "Swords of Justice".  These four Pokemon are all Fighting-types who resemble different ungulates and have differing second types (Cobalion is a Steel-Fighting goat, Terrakion a Rock-Fighting ox, Virizion a Grass-Fighting antelope, and Keldeo a Water-Fighting unicorn).  Each of them have similar stat numbers in different arrangements, and all of them can learn the move Sacred Sword, a Fighting attack few other Pokemon can learn.  I was so excited to see legendary Fighting-types when Black and White were released, and they still are one of my favorite sets of legendary Pokemon.  Thus, Team Chroma's mission would involve finding and recruiting these Pokemon to stop Team Gris.

The color aspect is mainly there because I like pretty colors, with the group led by five knights of colored uniforms, but it does serve a purpose.  Looking again at the types for the Swords of Justice, I noticed they fell in line with Wu Xing, the Chinese elemental system: Terrakion for Earth, Cobalion for Metal, Keldeo for Water, and Virizion for Wood.  All I was missing was Fire, and there were Fire-Fighting Pokemon I could probably match with the Swords of Justice somehow.  When depicted in a pentagram, these five elements are usually also identified with a different color.  I was intrigued by the Wu Xing cycle for a while, so I integrated the color scheme into this logo.  The order of the blades from the blunt end to the sharp end follows the creation cycle of Wu Xing: Earth (yellow) bears Metal (white), Metal enriches Water (black), Water nourishes Wood (green), Wood feed Fire (red), and Fire burns to create Earth.  The Red Knight of Team Chroma would be the group's leader, as his color did not match their targets (and because red is my favorite color).

As for the background decorations, the three lines represent sword slashes from Virizion (green), Terrakion (orange) and Cobalion (cyan).  The yellow glow around the symbol represents Keldeo, whose post is significantly different from his older siblings, yet he may surpass them.

I would like to found some kind of group like Team Chroma if I can, just some people discussing games or such.  This idea is also why I go by "RyuKageChroma" on Twitch.  I have also been playing a solo-Charizard run on Pokemon Red lately, where the Charizard is named "Ryu-Kage" with a trainer named "Chroma".  Team Chroma lives on!