So I feel like it's kinda lame for me to make my first post over here, but my boyfriend has been submitting designs for this contest and I wanted to get in on the game, too! Mostly I poke at the smogon server on shoddy battle, so I'm not a total newbie.
I started off thinking of how I could capture "fighting dirty" in a pokemon and ended up with a thief, mugger, assassin-type thing going on. The pokemon who I first became inspired by were Toxicroak, my favorite fighting type, and Darkrai. You can see Darkrai's influence in his flowy-ness.
Why the goo? I was going for inky blackness of night. I imagine goo would be swift and silent, much like a dark fighter would need to be.
Why the spade mask thing? A thief or mugger would not want his true identity known, so I decided to go with something faceless and impersonal. The spade is inspired by the idea of a thief leaving a calling card, and taking "calling card" literally, I picked a spade, being the most blade-like suit.
Basically I picture this entity as an inky, silent shadow, then with just a flash of its silvery blade and a glimpse of its silent face, its goals are met and its gone.
My worries, however, is that its not much of a pokemon. I don't like kingdom hearts, but I'm reminded of the Heartless thingies now that I stand back and look at my guy.
Here's a picture of him on a different background:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/0903/SuperMo0/inkypokeshopnavybg_little.jpg
Editing: I feel like getting my critique on, so I'll go up from my post and talk about what I see.
Paintseagull: I do love how cleanly your design is illustrated, and it's a very cute concept, but I have trouble seeing something based off a hyena as a special attacker. Hyenas are pretty stocky and built for ripping and tearing, and your little guy feels like he's meant for that, too. I feel like the tribal thing could be taken farther. You could get inspired by fantasy shamans or necromancers and have him possessed by spirits or visibly channeling some kind of ethereal energy. I also like how he's bipedal.
Dougjustdoug: I'm late in the game as far as checking out yer stuff, but I'm having trouble connecting voodoo to the dark type. To me, I think dark type pokemon are very much alive and malicious or selfish. A voodoo doll screams ghost-type for me, because it's just an avatar or vessel for something else. I will say that where you're going now is a lot better than what I saw briefly before. Putting aside the 9 thing, the patchwork look of your doll makes it feel like a witchdoctor's quick mock-up rather than something he would put a lot of time into. A longer, more female doll feels like too much attention to details.
