A Thank You To Pokémon. Pokémon Diamond was my first official Pokémon game. I remember sneaking into my sister’s room every morning to “borrow” her DS, returning it only after 3 hours of straight gameplay. I remember hiding her DS under my blanket every night, the tiny screen burning my eyes every night (I realise now that this makes it seem like all I learnt from Pokémon games is how to be a thief and a liar, but I promise that’s not what I’m getting at). To be the very best and to be complete the entire Pokédex were goals ingrained in my mind after each episode of the anime. It’s silly, but that was genuinely my dream once. This series has followed me through my whole life, and I can’t imagine who I’d be without it. Maybe my dream isn’t to be the best trainer anymore, but I still share the same drive trainer-me had to be the strongest Pokémon trainer. I loved learning about each of the 721 (as of today, 1025) different Pokémon. Each patch of grass intrigued me. “I’ll stop playing after seeing what Pokémon live in this area”, echoed in my head for hours. This was never true. Days were spent on guidebooks, just looking at each artwork. Ken Sugimori, the lead designer for Pokémon, has a way of telling a Pokémon’s entire personality through its colour and body language. I aspired to make something half as intricate as that. I wondered about the design process and how much work went into just one creature. It’s inspiring that the tiniest details can tell so much about a character. People say that every Pokémon has at least one fan. Even the not-as-cool ones had followers out there. With how much intent goes behind each element, I wouldn’t be surprised if that were true. After memorising the names of every Pokémon (I recently named each one in 4 hours just to confirm this), all I wanted was the next generation of games and thus the next batch of designs. Impatiently waiting, I turned to the internet, where a community of artists and YouTubers online dedicated to creating their own designs caught my interest. They were known as “Fakémon”, and people created them for fun or to make their own fangames with their original stories and designs. I sat through hours of design analysis videos to understand and replicate their ideas. Amazing how people can faithfully replicate a person’s art style. Creating fan designs that looked official became my new goal as a kid. It combined my two interests at the time: art and Pokémon. And so, every marble notebook in Elementary was promptly filled with my own Pokémon region rather than multiplication tables. Nothing could stop me from creating. I once got yelled at for drawing on the living room walls. It was a fire-type Pokémon, a large red ball of flames. Uninspiring, but I was also a child, so I’ll cut past-me some slack. This never deterred me, though; my art sucked back then, but I knew that with enough practice, I could create artworks indistinguishable from Ken Sugimori’s sketches. Ambitious, I know, but what can I say? I’ve been taught as a kid to always "be the very best". I don’t have this same drive, unfortunately. My education and personal life were given priority. As I took on more responsibilities, setting aside time to draw up 100 original designs for my dream Pokémon region became unrealistic. But as I learn to balance my work and entertainment, I’m excited to start replaying these games again. The most exciting news is that I’ve been inspired to create my own Pokémon fangame, or Romhack, recently. Circling back to the Chingling given to me by Noah, I want to give him something unforgettable for his birthday. We actually bonded over Pokémon at first. I still remember playing DS games with him in 9th grade. As such, I dusted off the old sketchbook and have been coding and drafting my very own Pokémon game during my free time. Now, with more technical and computer skills behind me, I can turn what once was a fantasy into a reality. Thank you, Pokémon, for the countless memories you’ve given me, and for inspiring me to create more.
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