See, it’s this follow up from everybody that makes every second worth all of it. I’m overwhelmingly overjoyed. Art is life. What better than to combine that spirit with the thing that brings us all here?
Ok so here’s my book on my favorites, and some of them overlap as winners, so a little of both.
Child is one of the categories that was impossible for me to vote in. Now that there have been a few years, we’ve been versed on some art contest veterans’ styles. Here is one such example where we cannot be surprised he won back his champion title. @maxymaxy ’s Dratini meeting is oozing with jazz. He’s got the spunk, kid. He has mastered this style, and everybody loves it. Each Pokemon is very maxy in their expression. They look childlike, within a childlike portrait. Everything is perfectly disproportionate, yet larger than life. The color and texture is youthful and innocent. Just go make cards professionally already. Now he is the two-time champ to beat. @Martin ’s feline morning delight is purfect. Feels like Baba’s Raichu, a masterpiece in itself, features one of my favorite Pokemon, it’s so satisfying to see most others agree it’s top notch. I love not only that its delivery and composition is stellar, but that the story idea it’s telling is both Pokemon-spirited, childlike, and humorous, with the title to fit. Just amazing, well deserved. Geez, @rattlesnake ’s peeking duck is, oh my god, admittedly my favorite in the whole contest. There is nothing but deep, deep joy I feel when I see this card. It’s sitting as my desktop background right now. If I begin to talk at great length about it alone, this (what is already going to be a ridiculously long post) would be an actual novella. I will just say, thank you so much for blessing the world with this divine piece of artwork. I am in awe. Also, I swear on my honor, the idea I was going to do for my trophy (#2) was almost exactly like this. Instead of him peeking, he was going to be diving into aquapolis-like ruins, but with a very similar atmosphere. That is the cherry on top of this all, to see yours.
@gus , I stared at your dratini party at dragonspiral tower for a long time. I adore it. It also invoked sentiments and memories in me of marioparty 1 on n64, Mario’s rainbow castle. It felt so much like that. I hear it when I see your art
Everything that I love of this category is embodied in your piece. It’s so damn good. I love your work each time around, your color pencil approach is so looked forward to. @khairis , year #2 champ, your work is even better than last year. Such a hard competition this year. Love the reference, love the look, love the detail. Yet another one that just works perfectly. @schileru , Mr. Mime is another one of my favorite Pokemon, and yours is one of my favorites of all. I love love love love your piece, and it made me laugh hysterically for several minutes, and more minutes again each time I revisited it. It’s amazing, man this category was brutal as hell this year. I can’t imagine a year ever being this hard again in child. No way.
Recreation was gut-wrenchingly hard too. Not as many particular favorites, but, objectively, nearly as hard. I thought the winners all brought something great to the table. @kromaticlanturn, you are not only a friend, but I will always love your art style. I voted Ninetales high, I think it is just as good as your previous golduck. @lookaclara ’s petals awakened was one I thought was utterly brilliant and was perfect for the category. As I’ve said before, your watercolor is vibrant and brimming with joy and the love of artistic expression. You made it better than Nishida did hers. Yes, I said it.
For 3D, I was in agony over who might take first place. I’m a massive fan of @fazool artwork and always look forward to his work, and his rocket’s gengar is basically as good as you can get for this category (with imagining the artwork as a card). It has everything I love about cards, and it’s fazool style. Nightmarishly excellent. @decoypalmette ’s EX fossil dungeon is otherworldly. Celestial might be the right word. Also perfect for the category, perfect understanding of the guidelines. Both these were amazing and I chef kissed them both, and they both ranked highest. It’s actually almost like fossil dungeon is the light, and gengar is the dark. Wasn’t this just a perfect top 2 for the category, conceptually? Another category where I think it will be hard to upstage in the future. I look forward to both of your works next time! And truth be told, I thoroughly enjoyed every single sub in this category. They were all gritty and eye catching. Well composed, great ideas.
Oh, original. You bugger. There’s way too much to unpack here. Forgive me. I do need to talk about the top 2 winners in addition to favorites, since this is the most celebrated category, and these artworks are so deserving. @decoypalmette ’s N’s Hisuian Typhlosion is incredible and so well deserved in its placement. It feels like Komiya, but is completely different, has transcendental atmosphere, some of the best I’ve seen in a card. Love the star lit yet dingy, warped forest, but the light that comes from within this gesture of love. It’s perfection. So phenomenal that I actually like this variant of Typhlosion now. You have that sort of artistic power, yes. You too, just go make cards professionally, geez. @versy ’s flash of lightning is of exactly the same in manner of quality. Unbelievable composition, lighting, color, pose, dynamic, naturalism, character… I could go on and on. I truly think this is deserving of champion. That sort of polished digital look, the one I’m not very fond of ordinarily… you do it the best. Better than any of the tcg artists that employ this. I speak to you in earnest. This card is BY FAR and away better than all 3 of the tcpi 2022 illustration contest winners. So yeah, our contest is better. Pokemon, get these people some jobs already, gawd.
@totodile_in_pursuit ’s Electrode’s City became better and better every time I looked at it. Pardon the pun… it is exploding with creativity. It also has excellent atmosphere. Those gritty cityscape dreamscape scenes make me weak in the knees. I love models, I love that it is photography as well as model work, making the depth of field an artistic factor. Would love to have this as a card, very much. It is definitely an E series card right here. Better than Morii. @rattlesnake clearly knows how to get me with his art. Scyther’s rage is both Kusube and not. It’s yours. This scyther, lurking in the black of night, revealing its face from the zero visibility conditions, menacingly arching its head out from the blackness, feels like a David Lynch still frame in my mind. I can feel his breathing. It feels very full of life. Quite surreal. Minimalistically as it needs to be. @lyleberr ’s Red’s Clefairy’s Metronome Overkill needs mention. Wow, do I love it. I would love it even more with a detailed background, but there is something to be said of its quality even as is. It’s purgatory, in the wiped mind of the Pikachu to where clefairy brought it upon the summoning of the metronome. I wouldn’t want to mess with that sort of omnipotence. @lookaclara ’s Delcatty’s Fern in the Sun is everything I said about the recreation sub, but better in every way. A watercolor masterclass in hue, in strokes, and texture. @gareth. Gareth Gareth Gareth. Just. go. make. cards. professionally. Already. Lilypad Pikachu is another masterpiece. You’re a visionary man. I want to buy art from you. Not only what you bring to this contest outside of the submissions, but I always heavily look forward to seeing your work. You’re a true artist. @bbobrob ’s The Sentry also deserves mention for being so whimsical, blending himself with 2 very well known tcg artists and creating a world of wonder. I love it. Last but not least (these were all in no particular order) is @cyberurchin ’s Crystal Lugia on the Hunt. Oh man is this acidic. One of the best subs. Compositionally and atmospherically the style I love to see. The light and air quality is really unique, the dotty aura surrounding Lugia is awesome. I am a fan of yours. And after reading these poetic posts so far, I want to add that @niece 's inspiration story is tearjerking and profound, and hearing it adds to the power of an already exquisite work that I thoroughly enjoyed. That’s the exact thing I and many wanted to hear from the artists in what led to their creation.
I think this category and child were the most brutal. Where I needed to pick more than 3, but couldn’t. Objectively there were more than 3 best artworks in these categories.
And all those I didn’t mention, I enjoyed seeing every single one. Just because I didn’t write something about all of them, doesn’t mean I didn’t have much to think and say about them. All full of love, life, and creativity.
Since Azul said something beautiful about his creating his trophy (which I was so happy he did), I’ll do something I haven’t done before, with regard to that.
sketch for trophy 2
I always look eagerly forward to making my trophy, one of my favorite parts of the contest prep.
Here’s a sort halfway point picture. I shockingly didn’t take a full frame one, must’ve been engrossed in it late at night. This pic was supposed to be to show Azul the idea for more paintings on the wall, but the final version only went with the pokemon legendaries.
sketch for trophy 1
I loved bringing Azul’s conception to life. He completely wrote and sketched the idea, photographed it, sent it and described it to me, so this is my depiction of his creation. He’s got a brilliant creative mind, as much as he shoots down his talent, he’s underestimating himself =p
Sorta halfway point picture. As much as I would love to share the complete versions of these, that and the card they are placed in is reserved for the winners!
The turnout of creativity for this event was amazing! This is my first year participating and I had no idea what to expect. You can tell you guys really are passionate about the subject matter here, there’s so much love for underrepresented pokemon and niche card references.
Really shocked that I was able to place at all with such tough competition. Big thanks to 
