Over the moon with this year’s submissions. Congratulations again folks and apologies for being a bit removed this year (life stuff). It was really neck and neck this year. @brendantheclayboy and I had some favorites as well that didn’t make top 3 so hoping to see yall return for the next one. Cheers!
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Congrats to all the winners and runnerups! This year was insanely competitive and I feel like it was anyone’s race.
And ofc big hand to @brendantheclayboy and everyone who is involved in making of this great event!
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Congratulations to all the winners, much deserved!! To @niece, your use of gripping texture and colours along with the overall impending composition was magic. I really wish this card existed.
Also I would like to say I really like your piece @cyberurchin, such an ethereal presence you captured with the soft tones and effortless yet strong streamline form you managed to render. Really had me imagining the flight from up in the sky.
Of course, well done to everyone who submitted, I love so many pieces this year. There really is a fantastic talent in this community.
Thanks many a times to @brendantheclayboy , @azulryu and all the many others for all the work in putting this together. This event that is valuable in so many ways, it certainly puts the good vibes back in this hobby.
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Congratulations to all the winners! Amazing artwork everyone 
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Loved this so much, incredible work across the board. Getting to share space with some incredible artists really fills me with both joy and inspiration. There’s truly awesome works of art I can’t wait to go back and enjoy for the years to come.
Thank you so much @brendantheclayboy & @azulryu for everything.
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Amazing work everybody! There were so many incredible entries. Thank you @brendantheclayboy and @azulryu for your organizational efforts 
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No way! Wow! Extermemly humbled to be able to finish top 3 in the Child’s category. Thank you everyone who voted for my piece. I really appreciate your love. 
Very truly this was a plesant surprise since I feel all other enteries really were done well and atleast captured the child-like essence very well. Again, thank you!
My thought process: I am a huge fan of horror and I think Pokemon has a lot of tropes and dex enteries where one can include a lot of horror elements. We just dont see it enough due to most of it being kid-friendly. So this really gave me an opportunity to explore and design some lore based on Drifloon / Drifblim pokedex enteries. I really enjoyed the planning part of my artwork and the elements and writing the backstory. I am also a fan of crayons and color pencils so I made use of them. The actual drawing…well it is what it is! I want to hopefully keep with the horror themes going forward!
Thank you everyone who participated and also to the winners. Besdies the winners, everyone who participated really makes this art contest what it is. This is a truly special E4 tradition and I have enjoyed doing this every year.
Huge thank you to @azulryu and @brendantheclayboy for organizing and really pushing everyone to participate, submit and then vote. I know it is not easy to chase people, so your efforts are truly appreciated.
Thank you and see you for the contest next year!
Cheers!
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Great job everyone, I am hoping I can join next year! Loved all of the unique pieces and thank you for putting on the contest!
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My sincere gratitude to everyone who voted for the cubone! I was quite surprised with how well it was received and want to reiterate how many great submissions there were this year, I had so many favorites! I knew I wanted to draw out Cubone and baseball vintage was the first idea to pop in my head.. Looking at everyone’s work, in my eyes, I am no where near as talented as many of you so I want to thank you all again!! 
And thank you @brendantheclayboy and @azulryu , this contest is one of many events that makes this forum so special and rewarding to participate in!
-rtas
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I am so thankful for this opportunity every year to be creative and spend time making something to share with this forum! I truly look forward to this event, and while I absolutely love entering it, I also love taking the time to appreciate every piece of art when it comes time to vote. Every year I sit down with my husband and we discuss which are our favorites, and by now it’s just become a yearly tradition! I want to sincerely thank every person who has contributed to making this happen, from coordinating the event, creating and entering artwork, and to every person who took the time to participate in the voting process!
I feel like I just can’t put into better words how incredibly happy and overwhelmed I feel to see how well my artwork was received. I just love doing this so much every year and everyone’s kindness and support means so much to me!! My artwork this year was really inspired by what I feel is really important in life. That at the end of the day I am able to be surrounded by my friends and family, and am able to enjoy life and feel love and happiness while being together.
Thank you again everyone for another amazing year and I can’t wait for the many more to come!!
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Big congratulations to all those who placed, and, of course, a big thank you to all those who participated and shared their own works of art! I plan to comment on everyone’s submissions in a later post, as everyone’s submission deserves recognition and praise. But just wanted to start with a thank you to the organizers @brendantheclayboy and @azulryu. The art contest is definitely one of the shining events on E4, and your dedication to the event and even your trophy arts are much appreciated by all.
I don’t have too much to share about my process this year, but it was my first dive into pixel art, and it was super fun.
Recreation piece
For my Recreation piece, the video I linked in my submission post basically served as inspiration for my idea. The pixel art in the Pokemon Trading Card Game for the Gameboy Color is really out of this world. They replicated the TCG art so incredibly well given the limitations of the system, and I wanted to try and put myself in the developers’ shoes and do my best at migrating a few card arts into the game. The biggest limitation that’s imposed on the imported art is that each card art can consist of only four colors, due to how 8-bit memory and the Gameboy system works. Since basically every art needs some shade of white and black, you basically only had two other colors to work with to replicate the complexity of the TCG art as best as possible.
I don’t think there’s too much to go into for the process, but I can share some interim pieces:
I was, at first, considering using one blue and one green color to build the Jumpluff art, but the black dithering required to impart shade on Jumpluff’s body looked horrid. (I know I have two shades of blue here, but I was mostly focused on testing the dithering for shading). Given this, the final product had to contain two shades of blue that would serve the purpose of shading Jumpluff’s body and also as the sky and grass.
This earlier version of the Raichu had the light beams formed through dithering with the yellow color, but this looked way too busy and unclear. So I tried blocking the light beams using negative space, and that ended up so much cleaner. You can see the Raichu here also has more vibrant colors. I decided to somewhat dull the colors a bit to better match the aesthetic of the arts in the original game.
The resolution of the original game screen also didn’t match well with the aspect ratio for the contest, so I made a border to help the piece fit the required aspect ratio. For those familiar with the Super Gameboy, I took inspiration from one of the possible Super Gameboy frames for the game:
3D Virtual piece
For my 3D Virtual piece, I had totally planned to do this as an original piece, using some traditional physical art medium (was maybe going to try oil pastels or crayons or something). Here’s my original quick sketch:
The original idea was to have Chinchou providing a night light in a dark forest/lake for a sleeping pokemon (Swadloon, in this case, because Swadloon is awesome and doesn’t get much attention) while being visited by a pair of curious Venomoths, as they are attracted to the light.
I was totally ready to finish this piece on paper:
But then I recalled Brendan mentioning that it would be great if more people participated in the 3D Virtual category, so I thought, “Maybe Blender!” @niece But that idea was very quickly shut down, as I didn’t feel like I had enough time to figure it out. So I took a quick look at the available sprites for Chinchou, Venomoth, and Swadloon (I already knew Swadloon had a good sprite, so I wasn’t worried about him). I found out that Venomoth had two sprites that had exactly the pose I wanted and could basically be used as is. I am not an experienced spriter, so I didn’t want to have to modify the sprite too much and especially didn’t want to mess with changing the “angle” of the sprite and the visualization, so the ready-made sprites were perfect and convinced me to enter in the 3D Virtual category.
The Chinchou sprite I would have to customize, since the pose wouldn’t be natural for a Pokemon game, but I could handle modifying one sprite.
Original, unmodified Chinchou sprite:
The bushes, trees, flowers, rocks, and bank (which are basically not seen in the final product 
) were taken from Pokemon Ranger and a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game, I think.
For the reflections of Venomoth in the water, I had to rely on a good ol’ paper model and the selfie cam on my phone (mimicking the water reflecting from the bottom) to figure out the right shape, which still may or may not be accurate.
Working on the finer details of the lighting and reflections was definitely my favorite part of the piece, and I’m happy with how it all turned out.
Lastly, I originally made the scene a lot bigger, but then had to cut a lot out due to trying to fit the final aspect ratio and figuring out the best framing for the pokemon. Here’s the overall larger scene:
Working on these two pieces was really exciting, and in the process, I discovered that I quite like the pixel art medium. May or may not return to this medium in future art contests!
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Wow, I’m shocked and honored to make the podium! Thank you! & thanks to the organizers for a fun event!
Huge congratulations to the heavy weight champ this year: @niece! “Patience” is absolutely a 10/10 & congratulations to everyone who participated. It’s no easy feat putting ourselves out there like this!
I have a wall of text of individual accolades I’ll post later on as well 
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Wow, thanks so much to everyone who voted for my recreation!!
Also can’t thank @brendantheclayboy and @azulryu enough for putting on such a great event. I always look forward to the artists on the forum coming together and showing off some amazing pieces every year
While I’m still typing out my compliments for all of the entries, I wanted to share some WIP notes and pictures that show a bit of what went into my submission:
WIP Pictures/Notes
I was inspired to recreate TCG Pocket art in this physical medium since many, including myself, are disappointed at the digital exclusivity of Pocket cards. I just needed to find Pocket art that would:
- Not require too many compromises, such as adding lineart where there isn’t in the original drawing
- Be colorful and work with the Energy cards I have at my disposal
I was happy to find that an illustration of one of my favorite Pokemon fit these criteria. It’s really a crime that this art by Yuu Nishida (one of the best Shinx TCG illustrations ever imo) is not in my binder!
The recreation required 105 separate pieces cut from 25 cards
I cut and pasted these pieces individually onto the cardboard backing with the printed guide
In-progress image of the cutting/gluing step
This all had to be done carefully enough that separations between cards are ultimately hidden by the black “lineart” layer (unless intended to be shown, such as the white highlights on the main blanket)
The black cardstock “lineart” layer which is then glued onto the cards/cardboard
Finished picture of the piece in a frame. This is how I normally post my pieces, but I had to rush to submit my piece late last week, so I posted a picture without the frame
The original TCG Pocket card, illustrated by Yuu Nishida
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Congrats to all the winners and all the artists! So many amazing creations this year as always. Huge thanks to @brendantheclayboy and @azulryu for hosting another successful event, we appreciate your time and energy.
Very honored to receive 3rd place for my Cubone “Rest In Peace” recreation. I’ve now completed a 3rd place hatrick in three years running! Thank you for all your love and support.
“Rest in Peace” Recreation 2025
“The Floor’s Hot Lava” Childhood 2025
“Marco Polo Mudkip’s It!” 3rd Pl Childhood 2024
“Peeking Duck” 3rd Pl Childhood 2023
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Congratulations to all of the winners! This is absolutely one of my favorite things to follow on efour every year and I’ll never stop being amazed at how many talented people we have here! A big thanks to @brendantheclayboy and @azulryu for running a smooth ship as usual! I’m sure it isn’t as easy as you make it look!
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Thanks to everyone who voted for Leila’s artwork, She was amazed when I told her she was close to the top 3 and received and honourable mention, Super happy and i told her i’d take her out to her favourite restaurant Cosmo next week as a reward for her hard work.
Also thank you so much for all the nice comments!
Here are a few photos and a card I made for her from the contest.
I’d love to make the eevee one a reality but not sure how to tackle it irl
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Maybe @HumanForScale has some advice, they have printed fan cards before
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Congratulations to the winners. Everyone put a lot of effort into their submissions and it was aweseome to see such a variation of styles. Definitely a community highlight!
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If you do I want one. 
Or in other words: *** and take my money.
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Really enjoyed voting and being part of this.
I may have missed this, but can we see the prize for this year’s winners anywhere?
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