ScraftyIsTheBest
On to new Horizons!
This situation with Gen 1's sprites relative to Sugimori's artwork is actually because of the situation with how Pokémon were designed in Gen 1. Back then, the sprites themselves were conceived before Sugimori made artwork for them. In a sense, the original Gen 1 sprites are ironically the rawest conception of them before any official artwork was made: when Red and Green were being developed, they actually created sprites raw with no base artwork to base them off of.My Issue with RBY sprites compared to the artwork of of Sugimoi and the anime is that they look so different. Look at these:
In contrast, I think the Gen 2 sprites look much better because they look a lot like the official artwork. The aforementioned reason above is why I think thr Gen 1 Sprites suck and are the worst.
It was only until Gen 2 that the Sugimori artwork came before the sprites. Starting from that Gen, Sugimori would design the official art, then the sprites would be created using the official Sugimori artwork as a basis. That's why the Gen 2 sprites look more like the official artwork. The Gen 1 sprites were created with no basis beforehand. Sugimori's artwork for the Gen 1 Pokémon came after the sprites were made: he created the artwork for them based on his interpretation of what the Pokémon the sprites showed off would look like in his head. From Gen 2: it was the reverse: he created the official art, then the sprite/model designers would design the in-game appearances accordingly based on the official art.