When I think of Fire and Fairy together, the first thing that pops into my head is a fantastical, divine, almost godly creature that wields fire in a protective, nurturing, and constructive way, like a guardian angel crossed with a guiding beacon. A lot of entries already went with a straight angel as the basis for this design, so to set mine apart I decided to work with something more animalistic in nature, and of all the mythical creatures at my disposal, to me there were none that seemed more overdue to make a Fairy-type out of than a gryphon. The lion is the king of beasts and the eagle the king of birds, so as a hybrid of the two, the gryphon could certainly seem like a ruler of a whole different league - and indeed, gryphons were even considered holy symbols of Christianity in medieval Europe. I originally considered basing it off a keythong - a type of wingless gryphon with solar rays coming out of its back - with a look derived from heraldic charges and some of the weaker Legendary Pokémon. There's still some influence from those ideas here and there, but since this CAP is about creating something with decidedly mediocre stats, I decided to give it a feel more like a demigod instead, and from there it ended up becoming the equivalent of one in modern fiction: a superhero!
Earlier drafts of this design ended up giving it a look and feel too much like a Fighting-type, especially once I decided to make it more explicitly akin to the obligatory "furbait" designs like Lucario or Zeraora that have popped up here and there in more recent generations, as well as the classic "flying brick" look to go with the hero theme. To better fit the Fairy typing and especially Pixilate, which I interpreted as having every action it takes be infused with divine, magical power, I first attempted to style it as more explicitly focused on magic use, more like Dr. Strange than Superman, but when it was pointed out in the Discord chats that sorcerer 'mons like Delphox tend to be part Psychic, I decided to instead make its angelic nature more explicit by turning the fire around its neck, originally styled more like Dr. Strange's magical cloak, into the shape of two pairs of flowing flames shaped like wings as a nod to the four-winged cherubim from the book of Ezekiel, which have lion and eagle features. These angels also have bull and human characteristics as well, which are more subtly referenced in the humanoid body shape and the decoration at the base of the neck, an Egyptian bronze mirror with bull-like horns on either side. The humanoid body with an avian head also fits the Egyptian aesthetic, subtly alluding to Ra, the falcon-headed sun god, not to mention that gryphons themselves also originated in Egyptian mythology (though they tended to lack wings altogether in portrayals in that context). The upper pair of wing flames is also able to curl upward so they form the shape of a halo around its head, while also invoking a stylized sun. As a final touch, the red feather colors and the crest on the head are inspired by both the cardinals of the Catholic Church and the male of the Northern cardinal bird that takes its name from them (whose black mask-like markings around the eyes also translated quite nicely into a domino mask with nifty Eye-Of-Horus-inspired eyeliner!).
