Reminds me of when the internet collectively realized that the Sugimori watercolors for the original 251 Pokémon had been scanned and reproduced with the completely wrong colors in western media for over 20 years:
Whats the deal with this artwork? I got into Pokemon as a kid in the late 90s* including all the Gameboy games through Sapphire/Ruby and I don’t remember any of this washed out art (like the Ditto example, it’s always been pink!).
Did I just miss this phenomenon entirely because I grew up right before it became big on the internet?
* I think I’ve still got a VHS tape of the promo material Nintendo used to originally introduce Pokemon to the US.
I definitely remember seeing Gen1 pokemon art as a kid that seemed, not washed out exactly but a bit less saturated compared to, say, the Pokémon anime that aired on American TV. To the extent I thought about this, I guess I assumed that when the original creators of Pokemon in Japan were first working on it (I doubt I had heard the name Tajiri Satoshi at that point in my life), they were doing hand-drawn experimental art, still trying to get the final design correct.
I got a Pikachu tattoo a few years ago, and after agreeing the design/placement the artist held up a series of coloured inks and made me do a binary-search, saying "This one, or that one?" and I think there were about six to choose from.
To me it was obvious there was one correct colour for Pikachu to be, she approved of my choice and said "Ahh yes the original design" which puzzled me at the time, but I guess there a nuances to the shades and versions of characters like this, which evolve over time (pun intended).
As for me? Tattoos fade over time so the colour is different than it used to be, but everyone who looks at it knows exactly what it should be so that's fine.
I am eternally grateful to media people who care a lot about this stuff. I know that it has an impact on my life that I’m not aware of, but I can’t bring myself to dive into this. I am glad that there are people who are into it, though.
As an aside I just had a realization: how can this typical representations of color spaces (larger blob of perceptible color and the smaller polygon of the color space) work?
Isn't the image encoded in one of those color spaces? That should make the perceptible-but-not-in-space colors impossible to represent, shouldn't it?
Reminds me of when the internet collectively realized that the Sugimori watercolors for the original 251 Pokémon had been scanned and reproduced with the completely wrong colors in western media for over 20 years:
https://kotaku.com/pokemon-ken-sugimori-original-art-red-blu...
>How did the low-quality Pokémon scans circulate for so long?
Japanese people take copyright more seriously which would explain why there would be literal interest in creating illegal scans of them.
Whats the deal with this artwork? I got into Pokemon as a kid in the late 90s* including all the Gameboy games through Sapphire/Ruby and I don’t remember any of this washed out art (like the Ditto example, it’s always been pink!).
Did I just miss this phenomenon entirely because I grew up right before it became big on the internet?
* I think I’ve still got a VHS tape of the promo material Nintendo used to originally introduce Pokemon to the US.
I definitely remember seeing Gen1 pokemon art as a kid that seemed, not washed out exactly but a bit less saturated compared to, say, the Pokémon anime that aired on American TV. To the extent I thought about this, I guess I assumed that when the original creators of Pokemon in Japan were first working on it (I doubt I had heard the name Tajiri Satoshi at that point in my life), they were doing hand-drawn experimental art, still trying to get the final design correct.
I got a Pikachu tattoo a few years ago, and after agreeing the design/placement the artist held up a series of coloured inks and made me do a binary-search, saying "This one, or that one?" and I think there were about six to choose from.
To me it was obvious there was one correct colour for Pikachu to be, she approved of my choice and said "Ahh yes the original design" which puzzled me at the time, but I guess there a nuances to the shades and versions of characters like this, which evolve over time (pun intended).
As for me? Tattoos fade over time so the colour is different than it used to be, but everyone who looks at it knows exactly what it should be so that's fine.
I am eternally grateful to media people who care a lot about this stuff. I know that it has an impact on my life that I’m not aware of, but I can’t bring myself to dive into this. I am glad that there are people who are into it, though.
Interesting article!
As an aside I just had a realization: how can this typical representations of color spaces (larger blob of perceptible color and the smaller polygon of the color space) work?
Isn't the image encoded in one of those color spaces? That should make the perceptible-but-not-in-space colors impossible to represent, shouldn't it?
The gradient in blob is the same as the one in the polygon, it’s just there as art to hint at what’s missing