The New 151

The main thing we felt was necessary to update these designs was to give them more colours, and more details in Mewtwo's case. When comparing to modern Legendary and Mythical Pokémon, Mewtwo and Mew are not bad, just incredibly plain.

We made one addition to the Mew design that felt very fitting to its concept: a caul. A caul or en-caul birth is when a baby is born with a piece of the amnionic sac over its head, or sometimes still completely inside it. This very rare occurrence is associated with good luck and even with supernatural powers in many cultures.

Hence, the caul emphasizes Mew's theme of birth and the Psychic type's supernatural side. It also looks like a space helmet, so it also plays into the Psychic type's space side and the panspermia theory of the origin of life (both on Earth and in the Pokémon world!).

Mew's twisting tails represent the DNA double helix and the mark on its forehead represents a chromosome.

Since the Legendary birds of Kanto are…legendary, we decided to take inspiration from multiple birds. They are also migratory, so we tried to incorporate elements of migratory birds into their designs.

To make their designs more cohesive as a set, we gave them some consistent designs: they share some colours, they all have something on their heads, and they all have something of their actual element on their body. More subtly, they also all carry seasonal inspirations—winter, summer and spring, respectively.

Specifically, Articuno takes inspiration from arctic terns, puffins and ptarmigans. Its tail references the Northern Lights.

Since Zapdos is inspired by Thunderbird, we focused on iconic North American birds for its design: the bald eagle, turkey vulture, black-billed magpie and pileated woodpecker.

Most of the time when people redesign Dragonite, they use Dratini and Dragonair as the starting point, and maybe even make a Dragonite with no limbs. We wanted to do the opposite: redesign them all with limbs.

Most people know the original Snorlax was partly inspired by Game Freak programmer Kōji Nishino. Well, we don't know Nishino personally, so instead we decided to take inspiration from a different colleague: Bird Keeper Toby.

Toby is a fan of Snorlax, is the leader of Team Snooze, and is also known to sleep just about anywhere—just have a look at the Bird Sleeper Toby instagram!

Aerodactyl takes inspiration from more modern interpretations of pterosaurs. A bit of Mega Aerodactyl pokes through as well.

For all three fossil families, we wanted to incorporate the rock they are revived from, in part to play into the notion that fossil Pokémon are Rock types because they were fossilized.

Kabuto and Kabutops are based on horseshoe crabs and samurai armour. We replaced Kabutops's scythe claws (a bit too much like Scyther, we thought) with crab-like claws that resemble kabutowari, a samurai blade with an extra little hook out the side.

For all three fossil families, we wanted to incorporate the rock they are revived from, in part to play into the notion that fossil Pokémon are Rock types because they were fossilized.

Omanyte and Omastar are each based on a different species of ammonite, with different kinds of shells.

For all three fossil families, we wanted to incorporate the rock they are revived from, in part to play into the notion that fossil Pokémon are Rock types because they were fossilized.

Eevee itself is already the perfect design of a generic mammal that could grow into anything, but it is a very Gen 1 design in its approach. Our job was simply to update its style, and we took heavy inspiration from Sprigatito for the body shape. The only thing we really added is the colour in its eyes, a hint of possibility.

We wanted to give the evolutions more variety in their body shapes and emphasize the element they represent as part of the design, but still keep as many through-lines in their designs as possible. They all have three colours, a face marking, something around the neck, and a hair-like element.

Vaporeon will probably be the most controversial since we removed the fishy traits of the original. We thought they were too different from the other evolutions; that they detracted from the mammal-ness of the set; and that they made Vaporeon look more like Fish or Aquatic type rather than elemental Water type.

Instead, we based Vaporeon on a river otter. The face marking and the ridge on its back look like waves, the pompadour references splashing water, and the collar is made of seafoam or bubbles.

Jolteon is based on a cheetah, with a lot of lightning elements mixed in. The fur is all pointy, as if it's been shocked, and the spiky hair looks like a mohawk. The blue around the neck adds a much-needed spot of colour contrast, and also looks like a choker, playing into the punk aesthetic of the hair and lightning-shaped tear tracks. The spots are made to look like speed arrows.

The original Porygon was supposed to represent advanced technology, right? It was an artificial life form that could exist both digitally and physically, developed with the latest 3D modelling technology of the mid 90s.

Well, that's old news. This Porygon is truly advanced: a quantum life form in four physical dimensions, capable of existing and operating in both the digital and the physical realms simultaneously.

In terms of its design, it is inspired by quantum mechanics, electron orbital diagrams, and a hypercube or tesseract. Though we only see one eye from this side, its eyes are shaped like the + and - symbols to reference atomic charge.

We embraced the fan theory that Ditto is a failed Mew clone, and tried to emphasize that connection. Ditto's blobby shape is more intentional here, to specifically call back to Mew's ears, arms and tail. Ditto's cat face is also a slight reference to Mew. (The tricky part is that we have not designed our take on Mew yet…)

Lapras is usually thought to be inspired by a plesiosaur, but plesiosaurs did not have shells like Lapras does. So we instead looked at another, somewhat related marine reptile called psephoderma, which had a leathery segmented shell on its back. We combined that with modern manatees, since Lapras's gentle nature fits better with the slow-moving lifestyle of sea cows.

Like so many Water/Ice types from Generation 1, Lapras doesn't show its Ice type very well. So we adjusted its color patterns to make it more icy (and with a hint of aurora) and added ridges of icy crystals along its back.

Original Magikarp and Gyarados are based on a Chinese legend where if a fish can jump up a waterfall and go through the dragon gate, they will become a dragon. We wanted to make that connection even clearer, so we gave Gyarados a more obvious Chinese dragon face, a smooth serpentine body rather than a segmented one, and a scaly pattern to reflect its fishy origins.

Magikarp lost its crown to make it more evidently weak, so that it doesn't carry that hint of majesty. That's also why we gave it an enormous eye reminiscent of Wishiwashi—to make it look even more pathetic. Its elongated, floppy body helps it looks more like a carp.

Tauros is a pretty simple Pokémon in concept, so we added some hints of matadors and bullfighting to make it more interesting, but making sure not to glorify the sport. The shapes of its colour patterns hint at matador outfits, and the red patch on its back references the bloody backs of the bulls.

Tauros's general body shape, and especially the shape of its horns, comes from aurochs, the extinct wild ancestor of modern cattle.

Is Magmar a blue-footed booby? A karura? A dirty joke? Or maybe all three, or none of the above?

Well, we decided to make it more of an echidna, since it has spikes on its back, a beak, and prominent claws. We also really wanted to remove the head boobs, so we gave it nicer fiery eyebrows.

We replaced the flame on the tip of the tail, which was quite common in Gen 1, with a flow flame design throughout the tail and smoke at the tip. The big shoulder flames are reminiscent of Magmortar.

Electabuzz is a pretty cool design, but what Game Freak did with Elekid and Electivire is even better. So we took the aesthetic of the newer Pokémon and applied it to Electabuzz: The big forearms and AC power plug design elements come from that.

We designed Electabuzz and Magmar together as a set. Since we decided to make Magmar an echidna, and echidnas can use electroreceptors to find food, it made sense to also add echidna elements to Electabuzz. That's why it has a longer snout and spikes around its elbows and shoulders.

The blue stripes add some color to an otherwise very monotone design, and reference Pokédex entries about Electabuzz glowing blue when they hold a lot of power.