The great Gen 5 CGI replacement (?)

[Ratequaza]

Originally wanted to make a little thread about illustrators you miss and was going to use Noriko Hotta as an example where I much prefer her CGI artworks to the BW 5ban stuff that followed. But when searching for further examples, I began to notice quite a pattern of CGI artists mainly active in Gen 4 (aka the Gen from my childhood) who stopped being featured in the early BW era, here are some examples:

Noriko Hotta
First illustration in HeartGold & SoulSilver, last illustration in BW base set. The reason this topic even exists and imo definitely a loss to card art at the very least for the BW era.

Shizurow
First illustration in EX Crystal Guardians, last illustration in Plasma Storm. Not as clear cut, but still mainly active in Gen 4

Takashi Yamaguchi
First card in HeartGold & SoulSilver, last card in Call of Legends. Just as much of a loss as Noriko Hotta imo due to the similar artstyle, which I really like.

Wataru Kawahara
First card in Supreme Victors, last card in Call of Legends.

Hideaki Hakozaki
First card in HeartGold & SoulSilver, last card in Boundaries crossed. Here for once it’s pretty clear why he stopped being featured since he went on to found PLANETA.

Kent Kanetsuna
First card in the DP Lucario deck, last new artwork in BW base set. Not so much a fan of the DPP era illustrations here, but definitely of the HGSS era.

Yuri Umemura
Basically only active during Call of Legends

Now this for me initially surprising amount of 3D / CGI artists mainly active during the DP and especially HGSS era explains why I find Gen 5 artwork of the rarer cards (so above holos) rather lacking in comparison to the generation before and after with a few exceptions. Now the need for CGI artwork was of course still there, so there was one exception:

Ryo Ueda
First card all the way back in EX Ruby & Sapphire, last card so far in Lost Origin.

And to fill the void there were also 3D illustrators starting around the time.

Ayaka Yoshida
First card in Call of Legends, still active.

Perhaps the most obvious successor I left for last though. It’s one we all know and I mentioned it earlier, I am of course talking about 5ban Graphics. They have a metric ton of illustrated cards, so I don’t think I have to show examples especially as they’re also rather well known and not liked very much from my perception. I left them last, because they’re the best explanation I can think of for why so many 3D artists stopped being commissioned for cards when Gen 5 started, as that’s exactly when 5ban started being active. So I think, with 5ban being described as “the card design studio for Creatures” in the Pokémon Trading Card Game Illustration Collection book, they wanted to bring more of the 3D artwork in house and thus switched to 5ban rather than commissioning multiple different artists independently. The aforementioned Ayaka Yoshida also starting around the time is apparently a former 5ban member too, so that also kinda supports the argument.

Anyway this has gotten longer than expected and those were just my 2 cents. So I wanted to ask (hence the General instead of Article category): Do we know of any other instance of so many artists (especially of the same artstyle category) stopping working on Pokémon cards at a similar time or was the switch from Gen 4 to Gen 5 an odd exception. Would love to hear the thoughts of everybody else!

[inertgeometry]

i imagine the creation of Creature’s in house 5ban studios caused them to cut ties with a lot of these artists, or at least not offer them as much.

then again, maybe some of these artists work in the studio as part of the team. i’m not sure how the operation works.

[inertgeometry]

it would be interesting to learn who all is on the team and if any are from these gen 3/4 cgi era days

[rtas]

I noticed this not too long ago with HGSS Legend cards from Shinji Higuchi & Sachiko Eba. Their non-cgi work is incredible so it’s sad to see they did not return for BW sets.

Thinking out loud: both DPP & BW implemented more 3D visuals than previous generations so I can see how Creatures would push for more CGI artwork at the time. I’m sure contracting is another big factor; having some kind of master agreement with the likes of 5ban or PLANETA to make X amount cards per set is more convenient than searching for artists, contacting them, contract negotiations, and processing invoices for each artist. This doesn’t seem to be an issue anymore, so you never know when we can see the return of a former illustrator.

[pfm]

If I had to make a speculative guess, the timing coincides with the development of XY, so it could be that they wanted to move any 3d graphics stuff internally. They were modeling all the official pokemon models for the game at the time. Maybe it was a combination of things like waiting the 3d expertise in-house, not wanting to leak the game or models by sending them out to contract 3d artists. And because they now had an in-house team, it disincentivizes paying external artists to do that work.

If you look at XY base, they really leaned into 5ban and it basically became the contemporary “Ken Sugimori stock art”

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