Since I wasn’t thrilled with the Pokemon I got in my first attempt, I thought I’d take advantage of a second try.
Pokemon: Oshawott
Fave: Black and White Promo - Mitsuhiro Arita. You can feel the emotion of the Pokemon in this illustration
Least Fave: _____________'s Oshawott, another Promo card from B&W Promos. 5ban missed on this, amongst most things
which pokemon’s rookie card is also their best art? Its a very hard question to me. I think T17 is probably the best typhlosion from an art perspective (and Im not really a huge typhlosion fan). Its hard because all gen 1 and 2 pokemon have eseries arts (except unown) which are usually leagues above the rest ie: lugia, ttar, blastoise, celebi, feraligatr, charizard (not the holo), ho oh (arguable) kingdra, etc
Agreed Sugimori trainers are great. Mr. Fuji and Pokemon Breeder Fields are two of my favorites.
Donohan, one of my favorites from Gold & Silver!
Favorite Donphan card was an easy decision, really like the only Dark Donphan. I should pick one of these up for my binder. 
There was no standout for worst Donphan card. I considered Donphan Prime from HGSS, but ultimately decided on the Pop 3 card.
And for a favorite honorable mention, Donphan’s Aquapolis card is also excellent!
Second try; this time I got Exploud.
I actually really liked this dude when he came out in the gameboy games!
Straight away I knew what my favourite would be! imakuni Exploud ex from the Trainer promos.
I then searched through and I must say a lot are god awful. I had to settle on two being the worst and to my horror one is by Arita himself!
For worst I went with Ex Crystal Guardians and Great Encounters
Best:
Worst two:
Let’s do this again.
I got Ditto. Most Ditto cards don’t have much going on with them unfortunately, but:
My favorite is the “come at me bro” Ditto. Also a special mention to all the Delta Species Dittos in different forms but I’m not choosing any of them for now as I want him to be in his actual Ditto form for this
And least favorite is the Boundaries Crossed Ditto. There are quite a few boring ones and ones I don’t care about but this one is really hideous for me for some reason.
Absolutely love the come at me bro ditto!
I just did a search and was actually shocked at how little ditto cards there are - thought would have been more!
I really like the XY promo ditto where he’s/she’s still in ditto colours but morphing into pikachu!
Zarude
Best:
Obviously the Garigari-kun promo which could only be obtained by eating copious amounts of popsicle sticks until you found a winning stick. The ice cream brand’s logo stamp elevates the card’s original artwork to a newfound level.
**Worst:**Has to be Zarude V from Sword And Shield. English card text, soulless 3D style, overly busy composition and zero stamps.
So I rolled Murkrow
Best
This card just looks and feels menacing and it gives me the vibes that Murkrow should put up.
Worst
Most of the Murkrow cards are just so boring, Murkrow + stock background… Yeah Imo this is the worst of the worst.
Had to give this another go, to much fun! This time around I got Furret.
Best**
**This would have made for a lovely holo.Worst**
**Another great example of a Ken Sugimori background done well. 
Greetz,
Quuador
Agreed. Even though it is the same artwork scaled down and flipped; it works well. I always say we would be even more spoiled as collectors if Sugimori illustrated new art for cards rather than Creatures pasting on stock art and giving the card a generic background.
Cacturne
Best: I love the colors on this card. It’s also refreshing to see Cacturne in a dynamic pose instead of just standing around like some sort of cactus.
Runner up: I don’t care much for the CGI art on this card, but I love the holo background and the overall color scheme.
Worst: In most cases, I actually like the simplicity of Sugimori stock art cards, but this is just bland and flat.
Best: Look at him, he’s looking up at the sun and he’s having a good day. He looks nice. Very different than other Kizuki artworks, so it’s interesting to see how their style has diverged.
Worst: I don’t like the head-on profile for Pidgey as much, and I’m underwhelmed by the scene.
I’ll do another roll.
Pokemon: Frosmoth
Comments: One of the stand out current generation Pokemon. Great design and I am a sucker for Bug Pokemon in general. Very easily could have been a Pokemon in any generation and fit in. It only has 4 different card designs so far(all the same card, play wise). None of the cards are particularly bad but I had to choose 1.
Best:
Worst:
I got Drowzee, the Hypnosis Pokemon.
The BEST is a recent card, should hopefully be coming out in the US within the next few sets:
The WORST is this abomination, I imagine they just gave an intern a thumb drive with a bunch of stock Sugimori PNGs and told them to go wild:
The Best:
TPC should get refunded for commissioning these monstrosities:
There’s something about the colors on this that make it look actually so cool. I haven’t seen this one before somehow… or at least not that I remember
Definitely my favorite of the WOTC era for Wigglytuff. So much detail and so many beautiful colors.
