Art for the dex

Hello artists,

I'm looking to get the dex spiffy and nice looking, and that requires art! A few requests:
XY's in game page has a nice image on its homepage. Could someone(s) make some similar style art for the other tiers? If you need help with mons to pick I can lend some advice~

I'm also looking to revamp this hubpage for the dex. My vision right now looks something like this:

With tapus (or some other SM mons) across the top in a clickable SM box, and mons representing the old gens filling the smaller oval images, again clickable (think: the images on the lefthand side of the Smogon homepage). Mons introduced in that gen (eg Dragonite for RBY) or mons dominant in OU in that gen (Snorlax in GSC). I'd rather lean towards the former but your discretion. Similar to the above, if you wanna bounce some ideas off of me let me know!

That's it for now, might be some more to come.
 
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Bummer

Jamming to the beat
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Brought this up with some players of older gens, and while we'll probably try and come up with a more definite list later (or if there is one and I just missed it), the Pokemon in the list below are safe bets to represent each gen. People are generally in agreement about the first three gens in regard to which Pokemon dominated, but the later gens allow for more options. We also brought up the notion if all boxes should have a mon introduced from that gen, but since Smogon favor the meta rather than appropriate flavor, assume for now that the below picks are what we're currently running with.

RBY - Tauros
GSC - Snorlax
ADV - Tyranitar
DPP - Heatran / Jirachi
BW - Latios / Politoed
ORAS - Clefable / Charizard X

Since Sun/Moon is the current gen it'll have a banner instead of a box and thus more room to include various Pokemon, so it's less restrictive. I can look into making a template for all of the boxes so that there can be some consistency between them all, otherwise it can be neat to have different artists illustrating each button. All on-site images require artist approval or the art badge, but since this is more of an open request, I'm fine with other artists contributing too, just know that I'll try and be extra nitpicky with the quality this time since these images are to be used for a section that receives a lot of traffic. If you're unfamiliar with artist approval and what to keep in mind in terms of art quality, check out this page.
 

Bummer

Jamming to the beat
is a Top Artist Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
Also some of my thoughts regarding the overall art that I posted in our discord chat earlier

[7:43 PM] Bummer: the art itself can have more variety, although naturally less stylised than normal
[7:44 PM] Bummer: an artist's own style can be generously used when illustrating an article or similar
[7:45 PM] Bummer: but when we need an icon to represent a whole game/gen, then people need to immediately recognise what mon it is
[7:45 PM] Bummer: so while an artist's style will still be seen in the end product, not straying too far away from how the official art looks would to me be ideal
[7:46 PM] Bummer: maybe it sucks but that's how it goes the more important something gets and we need to play it safe
[7:46 PM] Bummer: and dex icons are kind of that territory

Basically, if a viewer can't immediately recognise the Pokemon, then the artist's stylisation has gone too far and they've missed the mark with the assignment. Doesn't mean that we want all of the pics to look like they're from the same artist, just that they need to be around the same simplicity as official Pokemon art.
 
I'd be interested in doing the B/W latios/politoad one, I have an idea of politoad sitting on latios (riding him you could loosely say) but holding/clinging on as Latios is flying at speed. I am definitely open to other ideas, though, if there was one in particular.
 

LifeisDANK

Bird Enthusiast
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also was chatting with celtic and wanted to post logs:

LifeisDANK - Today at 2:00 AM
i know this is the best thing you ever seen so hold ur excitement
but i amped ur idea a bit
the banner should be the dex and each thing should show that its smog UNIVERSITY time to embrace that shit with plaques and hanging award sorta theme
1523301064595.png

and they should show their gen too cause its what people usually say. people say in gen 2.... not usually in gold and silver....
so both should be there
also i PERSONALLY think drawing two starters from each of those would best rep it. its the first thing you encounter and becomes the most nostalgic
thats my two cents
Celticpride34 - Today at 7:05 AM
really good!
LifeisDANK - Today at 8:48 AM
Thanks! Do you think the starters odea is good or should it just e whatever mons in the gen. I'd like to snag one of these and the banner tho
Celticpride34 - Today at 9:09 AM
starters are good yeah
 

LifeisDANK

Bird Enthusiast
is a Top Artistis a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnus
1523385469230.png

So i was thinking they can be framed in something like this...
quick horrible example here:
1523385496645.png

where u can break the frame a lil i think would be cool. Do you guys like the design? feel free to improve upon it im rather sloppy at times. If you like it ill share a PNG download or if you use SAI or Photoshop a layered download where u can have the ribbon on another layer

Dank edit: another cool thing might be to stylize the boarder too by gen, like gen one you can mute it a lot n such. or we cal keep all the same , either way
 
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The idea looks really cool, and I totally know why you would want to limit yourself to two Pokémon for each frame, but I personally feel like you should try to fit all three starters: imho it represents the generation better since it's the 'complete set' and doesn't need bias as to which of them gets excluded; if you still want to stick to two Pokémon (max) for styling and space reasons, maybe cover legends would also be a theme representing the generations, but at this point it would probably be better to go back to the initial 'most dominant OU Pokémon' I guess?
The ribbon is great, a fun idea I had was that you could maybe get different artists for each frame and keep the ribbon consistent, that way the frames could showcase more creative freedom and maybe even all be of different shapes etc. ! I think that could work out pretty well.
On the other hand, the common frame is cool too, great job as always :) I'd maybe just tone down the gradients on the frame, a bit similar to the smogon university logo, idk...
- Didn't see your edit, something like that could be neat too!
I hope this feedback helps you, really looking forward to what all the amazing artists here will come up with for this.
 
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Talked with LiD and we’d prefer to see starters or cover legends, we’re not totally against dominant OU mon for the gen but we feel to players unfamiliar with Smogon tiers it might create some confusion, and starters or legends are a bit more identifiable.
 

Ciran

Queen Of Puns
is a Top Artistis a member of the Battle Simulator Staff
I like it. Thumbs up on the Lugia is a little cheesy, but in a good way; it looks like Smogon. I also like how their wings are interacting with the banner. Ho-Oh's tail looks awkward to me though. I think it's at the wrong angle in comparison to the body, it looks like you drew it as an afterthought and didn't sketch out the full body because the attachment point doesn't look right. Also I think it'd be more visually appealing if Ho-Oh's tail was more similar to a horizontal flip of Lugia's back fin-things (not as large, just creating a similar arc). They're both close to the center of the banner so by having two similar body parts next to each other like that I think it could be draw the eye out from the center better.
 

Ciran

Queen Of Puns
is a Top Artistis a member of the Battle Simulator Staff
I just wanted to see how it'd hold up re-sized since there's a lot going on. Figured I'd post since other people might be wondering too.

cret_resize.jpg


Holds up nicely until about 150 x 134 pix. You can go smaller, but that's about the max. Width of 125 pix was ok too, but 100 pix was too small in my opinion. Might re-do the text for resize though.
 

LifeisDANK

Bird Enthusiast
is a Top Artistis a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnus
Yeah im working on making the badge file a lot larger and the ribbon seperately the one in my prevo post is small and compressed so it should look a lot better when i put the files up
 

Bummer

Jamming to the beat
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I give up, I'm not happy with any of the poses I've come up with.

BUT I do think I have a good idea for Gen1 with the Pikachu at the bottom as a tip of the hat to Yellow. So to whomever is the one to do Gen1, I hope you consider using my idea.

View attachment 111570
Can do RBY. While your take is certainly ambitious, the rule of thumb that also applies to logo making has always been: less is more. These images are expected to be shrunken down considerably if they are to be able to stand next to each other, so for everyone else attempting these, zoom out and see how they'll look in a smaller size so that you can correctly gauge how they'll look in practise.
 


Ask me if you need an even larger version

Didn't add text since I figured that's one thing we could standardise across all banners later
I know it'll probably be corrected, but there's a teeny tiny red blob in the bottom right hand corner of the banner that keeps catching my attantion lmao

Bummer edit: This has now been rectified
 
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