Special Edition: Original Pokémon artwork resurfaces

Hey there! It's your old Pika Pal, Cooltrainer Ace, here with a special edition of your favorite email. You may have heard chatter around the web about new scans of Ken Sugimori's art surfacing. These scans show the difference between the original watercolor art and the poorly scanned versions that were circulated via guide books in the West around the release of Gold and Silver.

Archivist/YouTuber Lewtwo & Christopher Wells are making sure these new, accurate scans are preserved forever. I sat down (over email) with Lewtwo to chat about this process.

How did you become a Pokemon Archivist?

Initially, I got interested in archival work because of my video work. Noticed that there was a lack of resources and it just snowballed into trying to create this big collection.

Explain your latest project regarding the scans of Ken Sugimori's original artwork.

The hunt for high quality Sugimori-style artwork from Blue & Gold/Silver has always been difficult because generally, we have no frame of reference for what it was "supposed" to look like. This changed when the Virtual Console ports for Red & Green, Blue, Yellow, Gold & Silver, and Crystal were released with HQ digital uploads of some old Pokémon artwork. The Red/Green and Blue artwork for Eevee, Vaporeon, Flareon & Jolteon stand out in particular, as they appear to be the most accurate scans we've ever seen.

You can literally see all of Sugimori's imperfections with the tools he used, right down to the way the watercolor bleeds in and around the line art, to the point we're convinced that this is the closest we will ever get in being able to scan the original piece.

One question this raised was that the artwork for RG and Blue appeared to have near-identical colors for the same Pokémon. This was a stark contrast to the known artwork at the time-- where RG's earlier artwork was more subdued, Blue's was incredibly high contrast, with most of the colors blown out to the point where most Pokémon didn't look right at all.

Artwork for Ditto, Chansey and Lickitung were becoming entirely colorless, and Pokémon that featured any bold colors on their artwork would have said colors crushed into solid chunks, effectively destroying any subtlety intended by Sugimori's watercolor style. The scans of this artwork were remarkably poor, and every source we found appeared to have largely stretched or misshapen art, which stemmed from the sources themselves, and not even from poor scan quality.

Where did the new scans come from?

These new scans originate from the Japanese-only Pokémon Gold and Silver Pokédex (which we also refer to as GS Zukan) strategy guide for Pokémon Gold & Silver, released in March 2000, following the release of Gold/Silver in Japan. It contains information on the original 250 Pokémon, as well as full-body artwork drawn by series lead artist Ken Sugimori.

All of the Pokémon introduced in Red & Green use their artwork from Pokémon Blue, and all of the Pokémon newly introduced in Gold & Silver use their artwork created for those games, with a handful of minor exceptions. We were sent full scans of the guidebook by ExcaliburZero in absurd resolution from his copy of the booklet.

How many generations were impacted by this?

Realistically, only the artwork from Blue really suffered, Red & Green or Gold & Silver artwork has never really been preserved in high quality either, but none had such a strange transition after being prepared for the West.

Future generations have been ruined by uploaders on other sites such as Bulbapedia with upscaled or misshapen artwork, which we have already set to rectify (though these files are in the thousands).

Where can people find the full list of new scans?

The full list of scans can be found at our Pokémon Asset Archive, though they will take a while to be uploaded, as we're making them transparent PNGs with accurate lighting, and ensuring that the colors aren't tinted by scanner/printer artifacting.

Are there other secrets or forgotten things out there in the Pokemon world that you'd like to rediscover or explore as an archivist?

Honestly, the holy grail that we could reasonably get our hands on are full, clean scans of every issue of GAME FREAK magazine. Some probably don't even exist anymore, though we do have one in full in the archive under the non-Pokémon folder.

Until next time,Cooltrainer Ace