High Quality Fanworks

People trying to imitate the rgb style do tend to overshoot (or...undershoot?) for the style. Even "modern" stylings tend to have a little something off than the house style, so I can't blame them for not quite hitting the mark on trying to purposely go off model.

I feel like ideally you'd need someone who is familiar with dot art but not exactly good at dot art to really capture it.
I think the spritework in the (not exactly high-quality) Pokémon Quartz hack nails the right idea of the Gen 1 sprites despite being a Gen 3 hack. The shading is often wonky but aside from that, you can tell what the creator was going for, generally, even if they're not especially good.
 
I think the spritework in the (not exactly high-quality) Pokémon Quartz hack nails the right idea of the Gen 1 sprites despite being a Gen 3 hack. The shading is often wonky but aside from that, you can tell what the creator was going for, generally, even if they're not especially good.
Quartz' wonkiness is a good example, yeah. iirc the creator of that did everything from scratch and had little experience on...all fronts, really, so it's very genuine.
 
That poor Butterfree is clearly outmatched, but it's still trying its best. Bless it.

The Lucario/Butterfree friendship is also so sweet.

EDIT: Also, holy shit they actually pay attention to type advantage! Weavile struggles against Lucario, but is able to do well against Butterfree. Nidoking has a rough time touching Butterfree, but holds off and ultimately subdues Lucario. Blaziken gets more clean hits on Lucario than vice versa before Lucario powers up. Blaziken and Butterfree trade hits.
 
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I feel like I discovered the video on this site, but I can't remember which thread.


This is an incredible piece of animation, and I really wish Z-Crystals worked like that (it wouldn't be practical to implement but the 6 years old in me won't accept that explanation).
Yeah, it has been posted elsewhere, but damn if it isn't worth posting again. The bit at 5:14 where Lucario runs on all fours is still my favorite part. You never really think about Lucario running like a dog, despite it, you know, being a dog. It's like Lucario saw Butterfree is immediate danger and just went into instinct mode.
 

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Previously on this thread we've talked about fan spritework and how many don't quite hit the mark of the generation spritework they're trying to mimic. Well, just found some very good Gameboy Spritework of the Gen VIII Pokemon:



Now, many of these are probably still too detailed (though that could just be Pokemon designs in general becoming more detailed, mostly caused they moved away from GB sprites thus were able to show more), however to me what makes me overlook that is the dynamic poses they put many of the Pokemon in. It's a common complaint that many of the new 3D models are boring because the Pokemon is just standing there, some don't even look like they're in a battle. Them also "defaulting" also gets rid of any personality that Pokemon is supposed to have, the Pokemon might as well be T-posing. But this is more of a recent problem, older game sprites (at least before Gen V, those game sprites were a bit basic but that's because they wanted to animate them which they did in the sequel; something on its own charm even if they sometimes got badly pixelated...) had to have their sprites be expressive from the get-go in order to get a "feel" of the Pokemon (not many probably read the Pokedex to know what a Pokemon is about). Fan sprites often make the mistake of putting the Pokemon in its default pose, but the default pose is mainly just for general merch and referential purposes (and give players the idea what the Pokemon generally looks like). But the in-game sprites need to be more expressive because you see the sprites when the Pokemon are battling each other thus they should be in dynamic poses like you took a snap shot of them in a middle of an action/attack. And that's exactly what this spirtework does, it may be a bit overdetailed but for most Pokemon it puts them in dynamic poses that shows personality and/or a sense of movement.
 
Quite old videos, but someone decided to animate the Kanto starters evolving as if they were Digimon. I won't link them all but here's Squirtle's:
They even included Mega Evolutions!
I guess the YouTube algorithm suddenly decided to boost these videos, since I also saw this on recommended earlier today!

The rabbit hole of video recommendations from those also led to this video from 2016, which looks pretty good for a fan project.

 
Gonna plug Pokémon Fool's Gold, a hack of Crystal where every Pokémon gets a regional-form-esque redesign. I've been quite enjoying it; it gives a fresh perspective on a lot of Pokémon.


It adds new areas, a few new trainers, new moves (both moves from later gens and wholly original moves), and the Physical/Special split. No Fairy type, though.

The dev team is also working on adding the Sevii Islands, along with Gen 3 Pokémon and the Gen 4 evos/prevos, and the Gen 8 evolutions (no longer regional). Oh, and Sylveon. Give it a look!
 

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