Timeline of Ken Sugimori Pokemon Art?

General
1

Simple question, are the drawings from the 1997 Part3/4 carddass sets earlier (prototype) arts?
I speculate they wanted new art to put on pokemon product, so they dug up these arts from Sugimori’s archives?

1997 Carddass Part 3/4:
imgur.com/q9RPomE

Art from Japanese Red Green - Feb 1996:
archives.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Category:Art_from_Pok%C3%A9mon_Red_and_Green

imgur.com/k6kAQWP

Art from Japanese Blue - Oct 1996:
archives.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Category:Art_from_Pok%C3%A9mon_Red_and_Blue

imgur.com/4mCDzTP

Sorry, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to use the "[IM G] codes per the sticky to embed the pictures, keep getting an error when I try.

2

What is your line of thinking to assume that they were illustrated earlier despite being released later?
In its earliest depictions, Charizard has only one single horn, in the Carddass 1997 it has two. So I guess that’s an indication that Carddass illustrations came later. Don’t really know, though.

3

I thought the one horn charizard thing was just Arita misinterpreting Charizard?

If we look at Pokemone Green’s Charizard spite, he has 2 horns.
imgur.com/XgQchPp
Yes the Pokemon Green/Red art from Sugimori, you can only see 1 horn, but I think the 2nd horn is hidden behind his head?

What also makes me think the 1997 art is earlier is the fact the Pikachu from the set has a white belly never seen in any other art.
imgur.com/0UCyaLQ

4

I had wondered the same and did some research but I can’t provide an answer. However here is some objective, potentially relevant information which I can provide.

Jumbo Carddass
Jumbo Carddass shares some of the Part 3/4 art and was released in December 1996 so we can set an upper bound on at least some of the art to before that point. Note that Carddass part 3/4 were released later, in April and June of 1997 respectively. Jumbo Carddass has really early variants like Charizard with only one horn, so that speaks to how ancient some of these arts are. Pkmn Red/Green sprites have two horns, so either that Charizard art was made before the red/green sprites, or else there was some span of time with inconsistent artwork. However, it’s not possible that all of the carddass 3/4 art was made before RG sprites because it is known that many pokemon were first depicted through the creation of their sprites.

Individual Pokemon - Early / Quirky Variants:

Kakuna
Kakuna has arms in Carddass Part 3/4. After a certain point, Kakuna never had arms anymore. The latest source I could find with arms besides 3/4 is its pokemon blue sprite. Link for all japanese green (left) vs japanese blue (right) sprites.

Pikachu
The most obvious one, pika has a white belly here. White belly is shown only in early art, and you might alternatively call it “distinctly colored belly” rather than white because that’s how it appears in the early game sprites. Sometimes there are edge-cases with a whiteish belly but no clear border between belly and body, like in the Fossil card Mr. Fuji, but distinct-border pika I’ve only seen in earlier releases.

The earliest appearance of yellow-belly I have seen is in the March 1996 corocoro magazine (released 2.15 1996) where you see the standard RG sugimori art. That’s shortly before the release of the first games.
The latest appearance of white-belly I have seen besides Carddass 3/4 is in the release of Pokemon 4Koma DX, released August 1996 (link). But I have no guarantee that my search has been exhaustive. Note: @firebirder31 pointed out nicely that detective pikachu has a white belly so it breaks this rule. If there’s any other example of a distinct belly that’d be interesting to document.

Slowpoke
Another quirk, slowpoke has a white belly in the Carddass 3/4 Aerodactyl card. Usually only slowbro has that belly, bro.

Others
There are yet other differences like charmander’s back spikes, but these existed for a while in the early days of pokemon so it can’t be used to date the 3/4 artwork before other things.

The Big Question
Could this be the earliest pokemon artwork? A lot of it has an earlier, more “beta” feel than the stock red-green sugimori art, which is the only competitor for a full-151 art set. I guess it seems doubtful because of the release date. But there’s no conclusive evidence either way so until we know more, who knows. A possible next step to learn more could be to try to get in touch with Sugimori or some of the other early pokemon people to see if they remember.

3 Likes
5

Oh, you might be right about the “one horn Zard” being just an Arita thing, I never actually looked at the sprites! The Pikachu indeed looks kinda prototypish as well.
However there are many pretty ‘complex’ artworks in there where multiple Pokemon interact with eachother (like Dratini choking Charmander, Kingler smashing Ditto etc.). I can’t imagine that these came before the seemingly simpler illustrations for the single Pokemon alone.

6

I don’t think it’s an Arita thing, here’s the Jumbo Carddass (thought to be and looks like Sugimori? But I don’t have a primary source):

2 Likes
7

Wow, nice points! Clearly you put a lot of thought into this before.

I think this raises an important question: Which came first, Sugimori’s drawing or the Green sprites? I think it’s dependent on which Pokemon?

I have a new theory!..

The fact that Ken Sugimori also drew a 1 horn zard in the jumbo carddass is perplexing, because it’s the same art style as the promo carddass #152/#153. I wonder if Part 3/4 are partially made up of early prototype drawings and the rest were drawn later in the same style to fill out a 151 set so the product could be sold? This would explain some really prototype looking pokemon like white belly Pikachu, but also explains why Charizard has 2 horns, because Sugimori drew that one later. And also explains why there’s more complex drawings as Muk pointed out.

8

The green sprites definitely came first at least in most cases. Here’s an excerpt from an interview with Sugimori (source):

Sugimori: “When we were developing Red & Green, the designers were programming sprites into the game without me checking them first. I never even saw Eevee until it was already in the game!” (laughs)

Interviewer: (laughs) “So at that time you didn’t make artwork then convert it to sprites — instead the sprites were made first, then you made the artwork later?”

Sugimori: “That’s right.”

This was obviously a casual conversation and wasn’t meant to say that ALL pokemon sprites came first. I’m under the impression that some pokemon were sketched first, and it seems very reasonable to assume, but I don’t remember the source for that. Probably those would include pokemon like Pikachu, clefairy, and maybe the starters. The earliest artwork I could find & date was drawn in December 1995 or earlier, it’s this 1996 new year’s art with an EVEN older pika variant that has brown hands!

749×538 353 KB

That is a few months before any pokemon products/games came out :blush:

The next question is whether Carddass 3/4/Jumbo art could have been drawn before Parts 1/2, and yeah I still don’t have any objective evidence in that regard. There was a historical pokemon exhibit in the British Museum for the 25th anniversary which showed some of the originals of Sugimori’s the RG stock art, but when I looked into that I wasn’t sure that they claimed it was the first-drawn art. Maybe someone can look more into that. I consider it somewhat unlikely that 3/4 was first, but I do totally agree that 3/4 has more early-style artwork idiosyncrasies than 1/2, so as they say in Katakana…

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
In my view, any conclusions without further evidence could only be considered hypothesis and not proof. I think it’s an exciting and not-outrageous possibility that some of the 3/4 art was first, so hopefully some day we will find better evidence one way or another.

4 Likes
9

PS if someone has a translation for the Jan 1996 new year’s art, that might be cool to know about. Enticingly, it says “POKEMON CONTEST”. Internet says it was used as splash art for game freak’s website, but I don’t think I ever saw a translation. Maybe @japanime would be interested?

10

Not a translator but I tried scanning the image with Google Lens:

Top left reads “Happy New Year”

and the bottom right reads
“I look forward to working with you this year as well.”
“Game Freak Co., Ltd. CEO Satoshi Tajiri”

1 Like
11

Wow fantastic thread! I don’t have much to add to this but after learning about the white belly pikachu in the early art and Carddass card, I started looking at different pikachu arts. I always knew I was attracted to this early art but couldn’t figure out why, the white belly makes sense!

Interestingly enough, while looking through different pikachu arts, I noticed that actually Detective Pikachu clearly has this white belly which we haven’t seen featured since when?? 1990’s?

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12

That’s a great idea! So it looks like there might not be much substantial there. Then again, it’s a bit suspicious that all that text on the top only translates to “Happy New Year” xD so maybe there is something missing.

13

I think the base set artwork of Charizard has one horn