Reblog account

Ability Form 1: Overcoat

The science

Based on bacterial biofilm, which is basically when a bunch of bacteria get together in the same spot and start excreting this sticky slime stuff that structurally keeps the bacteria together (and also act as a medium for sharing useful resources between the bacteria, like enzymes, nutrients, etc.).

The design

The strings connecting the bacteria is based on what the slime stuff looks like on a microscopic level, specifically in electron micrographs like this one

The violet colour of the (rod) bacteria in the biofilm is a reference to Gram staining, which is a type of bacterial stain used to classify bacteria into two groups: bacteria that contain peptidoglycan in their cell walls (which stain violet) and bacteria that don't (these stain pink). Peptidoglycan is this pretty chonky polymer compound that's used to strengthen bacterial cell walls, so I thought it fit the role of Overcoat (which protects your Pokémon from things like weather)

Ability Form 2: Magic Guard

The science

Based on the myelin sheath, which are these segments of tube-like insulation that surrounds your neurons (see picture here). Mostly people talk about how it makes your neural signals propagate faster, which is true, but this ability form was more of a reference to its general protective role; it physically and electrically insulates your neurons. (Surprisingly I could not find a super good primary source for myelin providing physical protection, so don't cite me on that, but given it's literally a physical barrier this seems like a pretty safe assumption.)

The design

The entire body is based on a pseudounipolar neuron, which just means it only has one part extend out of the main body but shortly after it splits into two long parts (axons). I could have made it a bipolar neuron I guess (two parts extend out of the main body), but having a neck made it look a little closer to the base form's body

I wanted to give it dendrite fingers but it looked too creepy. I'm not sure if the three long fingers I gave it in the final design made it less creepy.

Since Overcoat and Magic Guard are both shield-type abilities, they're drawn as more closely related on the the phylogenetic tree (white thing in the center).

Ability Form 3: Regenerator

The science

This one is the most hype imo. In 2015 Dr. Will Ratcliff did this pretty sick experiment about the evolution of multicellularity (since at some point a long time ago life was single-celled) where he kept propagating the same single-celled yeast for a mega long time, and eventually the yeast evolves a multi-cellular "snowflake" form where after undergoing mitosis, the resulting daughter cells don't split, but stay attached, resulting in the yeast forming these clusters that create these cute little branches. I don't know where I was going with this. Oh right, the branching out reminded me a lot of regenerating limbs, so that was the inspiration for this one.

Anyway this is like one of my favourite experiments ever, there's some pretty good news articles out there about if you want to learn more about it!

The design

The segments are yeast cells, and the balls within are the nuclei.

The colour scheme was based on this fluorescent microscopy photo of the snowflake yeast. Originally I had the nuclei be bright orange in reference to this other microscopy picture but I thought the colour scheme was deviating too much from the base form for an ability form lol.

Speaking of here's the original unhinged colour drafts:

if i did commit to the full alternate form i think the biofilm one is poison, myelin one is fighting, yeast one is uhh...dude idek, i mean the fluorescent microscopy vibe is pretty strong so maybe electric lol? it's giving ghost vibe too though

they're not actually just individual characters theres hundreds maybe thousands even millions of each of them I mean after all they're all our cells and we aren't just a singular cell