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Description
MEGA CHARIZARD!!!!
When I first saw this bad boy I was pleased, it wasn't BAD nor was it OVER DESIGNED with the ridiculous paraphernalia of some other mega evolved pokemon like MegaAmpharos's Hair, Mega Absol's wings ( I'd much rather preferred a more creative design here some fan creations are better than the Ken Sugimori designed version) etc.

In the beginning to me he seemed easily the best designed out of the gen 1 mega evos, he seemed like a natural progression from the winged stage 2 fire dragon. I was SO disappointed by Mega Blastoise and Mega Venusaur. For blastoise the official mega evo artwork by Ken Sugimori just LOOKED BAD, the tiny cannons on his arms took away his turtle-ness and the whole ear-eye arrangement made him look a bit dopey. Mega Venusaur didn't look terrible, but his design was so uninspired almost so much that at a passing glance the untrained eye would not notice the difference. What's with the bloody flower on his head, eh? I'd love to talk more about the design element failures of these two (or one rather as I'll explain later) but that is for two other pictures which may or may not be made in the future. So just to sum up my order of favorites would be Mega Charizard, Mega Venusaur, Mega Blastoise.

Recently though that ordering has changed now being Blastoise, Charizard and then Venusaur (who isn't bad but just boring). What changed my mind?
The Fan-art done by you guys! Whilst the official artwork for Mega Blastoise does not do him too many favours, there are just some brilliant people out there who've made him look absolutely, head-crushingly badass. My faves are down below, hope the artists take this as a compliment!
www.deviantart.com/art/Mega-Bl…
www.deviantart.com/art/Pokemon…
www.deviantart.com/art/Pokemon…
www.deviantart.com/art/Choose-…
These people have just GOT him, they really have, please like and favorite these bad-boys. Hats off to them for making me change my opinion, I am pretty sure I'll be doing my own artwork of him later on because of them (EXTREMELY skeptical about doing venusaur though). I love the bulk and the badassery of these images, reminds me of a hulking Arnold Schwarzenegger/Terminator With a Bazooka strapped to his back and duel wielded sub machine guns.
However, there is a reason Charizard went down the list (though still ahead of venusaur). More and more as I looked at the fan art his design seemed slightly uninspired where Blastoise seemed the more bold in terms of design choices (even the non mega designs you can see which of the too is more creative). Don't get me wrong, I still love him and he's nowhere near as uninspired as Mega Venusaur, it's just that I had designs for him in my head which seemed a tad bit more imaginative maybe?? Or maybe I was over-hyped about what the worldwide most famous pokemon would look like in Mega form (Blaziken's my fave guys FYI, I'm not an auto charizard fave kinda guy).

So let's break down the design elements to see what I like and what I don't. I'm starting with the negatives. In the general sense of it all I've already mentioned that the design became more uninspired the more I looked at it, the head for example grew and extra head spike which seems like a natural progression, but the more I think about it the more predictable it seems despite this I like the extra spike on the head, it's just that it wasn't a huge surprise and could've been executed better perhaps. I absolutely HATE the arms on the original charizard it had separate finger protrusions, not little claws poking out from a rudimentary hand. Those hands on normal charizard actually looked like they were functional and could GRIP things and fly off with them a la "Seismic-Toss badassery", they looked powerful. Mega charizard's arm design is pathetic, they are given less emphasis in the grand scheme of things and almost seem to have less musculature, if that makes any sense the biggest offender is those teensy tiny wing like structures jutting out from the lower arm regions. This was obviously Sugimori's attempt to pay homage to Wyverns which are per my definition, smaller versions of dragons with their front forelimbs being bat-like wing structures rather than full blown arms/legs, whereas dragons would have four separate legs and wings separately on their backs. Why I'm so against these "mini-wings" is because they are so small and probably lack function, they are probably just there for show falling into the typical Mega evolution design trope of adding random non-functional design elements AKA the hair on Ampharos and the head flower on venusaur. The perfect word to describe the arms is "vestigial" and they are most certainly a definite down grade from those of charizard stage 2.
Now let's begin the transition into stuff I did like and I would like to do this by bringing up design elements that harken back to my beloved charmeleon some of which work and some which don't. Let me be clear from the get-go that I love charmeleon even MORE than charizard, both of which are in my top five. the worst element added is the claws which worked on charmeleon because they were his main feature massive in relative size able to slash through metal. Somehow something tells me Mega charizard won't be using these that much. Arguably what seems like a proportionately smaller snout on mega charizard is also taken from the charmeleon design, It suits him and you can see that with the extra head spike it gives charizard a more dragonish look I suppose, it's sort of hit and miss for me because I'm not sure where I stand on it because while it suits it's not amazing and it kinda looses a bit of charizards character through the evolution process. The Head's changes have been reflected in the body as well which is slimmed down and longer with a longer tail, it gives charizard more of a serpentine look which I definitely like; even the head looks snake-like on the official artwork if not the image above. At the same time it loses the raw,angry,aggressive, fat-bellied, huge-mawed form which befitted the original charizard. Another Charmeleon like aspect is what appears to be darker coloured skin which I DIG all the way. Keep in mind my observations about the shorter snout and the darker colored skin is subjective and I'm not sure whether they actually exist, certainly in ken sugimori's art work it appears that way and such can be seen on all the fanart on this site, however when I looked at in game screenshots Mega Charizard was significantly lighter and it as so low res I couldn't really ascertain the snout size...
I like the Lower Jaw being the same colour of the belly, it's very reminiscent of other awesome pokemon like feraligatr, blastoise and sceptile, it kinda adds an animalistic quality especially with the jutting out teeth, it's certainly a challenge to draw right from certain angles without making MC's head seem too bottom heavy, you might be able to notice how I struggled at this point. The wings are suitably ripped like a weathered old dragon (amongst other dragon like elements). I like the tail, I've heard people argue that mega pokemon are just "spikier" versions of the originals perhaps having a jab at the unimaginative nature of some of the designs but screw it- spikey is cool and I like the tail again very dragon like, it almost makes up for the arms. Finally the legs are less stubby-GOOD he actually looks like he can maintain a decent walking speed on land and achieve a proper high enough jump to launch him in the air. I don't know how to describe the change- are the more "raptor like"? I dunno.

Finally let's talk about the actual PICTURE I drew. I know, preposterous right?
Done on Mypaint, and incredibly easy to use graphics program which makes good use of my tablet. Ken Sugimori's Style is like the antithesis of mine; neat,simple, clean-cut yet elegant and I LIKE IT, take a look at the rest of my gallery if you want to see what I mean. I tried to emulate him as much as I could. This ended up waaaaay better than my shitty expectations but is far from perfect. The line art is too thick and it would've been waaaay too much effort to thin it out. Also I'm not happy with his lower jaw proportions (too large maybe?) and the head proportions. I may fix this later...it's simple enough..

So guys what do you think?? Did I get sugimori's style well? Constructive criticism appreciated. More importantly I want to hear your in depth opinion on Mega evolutions and in depth analysis on the designs for each new one. Excited to hear from you all.

You have my permission to use if you credit me in text at least this size

Description
MEGA CHARIZARD!!!!
When I first saw this bad boy I was pleased, it wasn't BAD nor was it OVER DESIGNED with the ridiculous paraphernalia of some other mega evolved pokemon like MegaAmpharos's Hair, Mega Absol's wings ( I'd much rather preferred a more creative design here some fan creations are better than the Ken Sugimori designed version) etc.

In the beginning to me he seemed easily the best designed out of the gen 1 mega evos, he seemed like a natural progression from the winged stage 2 fire dragon. I was SO disappointed by Mega Blastoise and Mega Venusaur. For blastoise the official mega evo artwork by Ken Sugimori just LOOKED BAD, the tiny cannons on his arms took away his turtle-ness and the whole ear-eye arrangement made him look a bit dopey. Mega Venusaur didn't look terrible, but his design was so uninspired almost so much that at a passing glance the untrained eye would not notice the difference. What's with the bloody flower on his head, eh? I'd love to talk more about the design element failures of these two (or one rather as I'll explain later) but that is for two other pictures which may or may not be made in the future. So just to sum up my order of favorites would be Mega Charizard, Mega Venusaur, Mega Blastoise.

Recently though that ordering has changed now being Blastoise, Charizard and then Venusaur (who isn't bad but just boring). What changed my mind?
The Fan-art done by you guys! Whilst the official artwork for Mega Blastoise does not do him too many favours, there are just some brilliant people out there who've made him look absolutely, head-crushingly badass. My faves are down below, hope the artists take this as a compliment!
www.deviantart.com/art/Mega-Bl…
www.deviantart.com/art/Pokemon…
www.deviantart.com/art/Pokemon…
www.deviantart.com/art/Choose-…
These people have just GOT him, they really have, please like and favorite these bad-boys. Hats off to them for making me change my opinion, I am pretty sure I'll be doing my own artwork of him later on because of them (EXTREMELY skeptical about doing venusaur though). I love the bulk and the badassery of these images, reminds me of a hulking Arnold Schwarzenegger/Terminator With a Bazooka strapped to his back and duel wielded sub machine guns.
However, there is a reason Charizard went down the list (though still ahead of venusaur). More and more as I looked at the fan art his design seemed slightly uninspired where Blastoise seemed the more bold in terms of design choices (even the non mega designs you can see which of the too is more creative). Don't get me wrong, I still love him and he's nowhere near as uninspired as Mega Venusaur, it's just that I had designs for him in my head which seemed a tad bit more imaginative maybe?? Or maybe I was over-hyped about what the worldwide most famous pokemon would look like in Mega form (Blaziken's my fave guys FYI, I'm not an auto charizard fave kinda guy).

So let's break down the design elements to see what I like and what I don't. I'm starting with the negatives. In the general sense of it all I've already mentioned that the design became more uninspired the more I looked at it, the head for example grew and extra head spike which seems like a natural progression, but the more I think about it the more predictable it seems despite this I like the extra spike on the head, it's just that it wasn't a huge surprise and could've been executed better perhaps. I absolutely HATE the arms on the original charizard it had separate finger protrusions, not little claws poking out from a rudimentary hand. Those hands on normal charizard actually looked like they were functional and could GRIP things and fly off with them a la "Seismic-Toss badassery", they looked powerful. Mega charizard's arm design is pathetic, they are given less emphasis in the grand scheme of things and almost seem to have less musculature, if that makes any sense the biggest offender is those teensy tiny wing like structures jutting out from the lower arm regions. This was obviously Sugimori's attempt to pay homage to Wyverns which are per my definition, smaller versions of dragons with their front forelimbs being bat-like wing structures rather than full blown arms/legs, whereas dragons would have four separate legs and wings separately on their backs. Why I'm so against these "mini-wings" is because they are so small and probably lack function, they are probably just there for show falling into the typical Mega evolution design trope of adding random non-functional design elements AKA the hair on Ampharos and the head flower on venusaur. The perfect word to describe the arms is "vestigial" and they are most certainly a definite down grade from those of charizard stage 2.
Now let's begin the transition into stuff I did like and I would like to do this by bringing up design elements that harken back to my beloved charmeleon some of which work and some which don't. Let me be clear from the get-go that I love charmeleon even MORE than charizard, both of which are in my top five. the worst element added is the claws which worked on charmeleon because they were his main feature massive in relative size able to slash through metal. Somehow something tells me Mega charizard won't be using these that much. Arguably what seems like a proportionately smaller snout on mega charizard is also taken from the charmeleon design, It suits him and you can see that with the extra head spike it gives charizard a more dragonish look I suppose, it's sort of hit and miss for me because I'm not sure where I stand on it because while it suits it's not amazing and it kinda looses a bit of charizards character through the evolution process. The Head's changes have been reflected in the body as well which is slimmed down and longer with a longer tail, it gives charizard more of a serpentine look which I definitely like; even the head looks snake-like on the official artwork if not the image above. At the same time it loses the raw,angry,aggressive, fat-bellied, huge-mawed form which befitted the original charizard. Another Charmeleon like aspect is what appears to be darker coloured skin which I DIG all the way. Keep in mind my observations about the shorter snout and the darker colored skin is subjective and I'm not sure whether they actually exist, certainly in ken sugimori's art work it appears that way and such can be seen on all the fanart on this site, however when I looked at in game screenshots Mega Charizard was significantly lighter and it as so low res I couldn't really ascertain the snout size...
I like the Lower Jaw being the same colour of the belly, it's very reminiscent of other awesome pokemon like feraligatr, blastoise and sceptile, it kinda adds an animalistic quality especially with the jutting out teeth, it's certainly a challenge to draw right from certain angles without making MC's head seem too bottom heavy, you might be able to notice how I struggled at this point. The wings are suitably ripped like a weathered old dragon (amongst other dragon like elements). I like the tail, I've heard people argue that mega pokemon are just "spikier" versions of the originals perhaps having a jab at the unimaginative nature of some of the designs but screw it- spikey is cool and I like the tail again very dragon like, it almost makes up for the arms. Finally the legs are less stubby-GOOD he actually looks like he can maintain a decent walking speed on land and achieve a proper high enough jump to launch him in the air. I don't know how to describe the change- are the more "raptor like"? I dunno.

Finally let's talk about the actual PICTURE I drew. I know, preposterous right?
Done on Mypaint, and incredibly easy to use graphics program which makes good use of my tablet. Ken Sugimori's Style is like the antithesis of mine; neat,simple, clean-cut yet elegant and I LIKE IT, take a look at the rest of my gallery if you want to see what I mean. I tried to emulate him as much as I could. This ended up waaaaay better than my shitty expectations but is far from perfect. The line art is too thick and it would've been waaaay too much effort to thin it out. Also I'm not happy with his lower jaw proportions (too large maybe?) and the head proportions. I may fix this later...it's simple enough..

So guys what do you think?? Did I get sugimori's style well? Constructive criticism appreciated. More importantly I want to hear your in depth opinion on Mega evolutions and in depth analysis on the designs for each new one. Excited to hear from you all.

You have my permission to use if you credit me in text at least this size