Munchlax and Bonsly had appeared in the anime and the side game Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness, and rumor had it that for the first time the starters would deviate from the Grass/Fire/Water formula. There were a few minor leaks, such as Lickitung and Magmar getting evolutions, which a few people drew their own interpretations of. These images being used in hoaxes such as fake leaks ultimately lead to what those who were there call The Summer of Fakemon.

It felt like new fake leaks were appearing every day. It was pretty easy to recognize most as being fake, but for some it was hard to be sure, while others were completely convincing. At that point, I’d been drawing and editing sprites for a Sailor Moon web comic for about two years, so I was mostly interested in the pixel art aspect of all the fakes. Granted, I wasn’t very GOOD with pixel art, but I still enjoyed it. When I threw my hat into the hoaxing ring, it was with something that I thought would fall into the “obviously fake” category.

It was picked up by several major Pokemon fan sites, particularly Spanish-language ones for some reason, and got around enough that Serebii added it to their Fake Pokemon page. I think the reason a lot of people believed it was real might have been because it was just too ugly. If someone were trying to pass off a fakemon as real, they would make it cute or cool, not ugly and weird, right?

My fondest memory of people reacting to it was one person, who seemed to believe that it was real, referring to it as “Cthulhu’s dog”.

I didn’t bother making it look convincing, since I didn’t think anyone would buy it and it was going to be in a small distorted image anyway. As you can see, it’s crudely cobbled together… but what exactly are we looking at here? As luck would have it, I never delete my working files.

The head is actually that of a Beautifly, with a single smoothed-out Articuno wing mirrored to serve as both ears (…or whatever those things are), which also seems to be where I got the blue color palette.

The body is an Espeon’s. You can actually see those lines, left over from the legs, in the final design.

The fins are the leg-wing-things of a Crobat, recolored but otherwise unedited.

Needless to say, when I started I just thought that Beautifly’s head would look interesting, and had no clear idea what direction I was going with the design.

Next up was a Gorebyss tail, and this is where things went a little… experimental. I knew that I didn’t want that purple fan on the end, but I really didn’t know what the end of the tail SHOULD look like.

I ultimately settled on the tail in the bottom-right, which is actually the feathers from the top of a Swablu’s head. I considered leaving it like that, but felt like it was still a little too simple. I decided to add part of a Magikarp tail, to make it more similar to the Kingdra design in the top-right.

From there, for whatever reason, I had the idea to shape the tail into a fishing net, hence the creature’s name, Tsurigu (Japanese for fishing tackle). I honestly have no idea if anyone but me ever saw the tail as a fishing net.

Finally, the adornments! I used the rear part of Lanturn’s antenna, editing it just enough so that the ball portion looked like it was in the foreground. I removed the bottom (earlobe?) parts of the modified Articuno wings, and drew on some gold rings just to add a few points of visual interest.

There you have it! Eleven years later, the full truth of Tsurigu’s creation. It’s hard to say how far it spread or how many people saw it, considering it’s been so long and most of the sites that posted it have disappeared. Over the years I’ve seen the design used in a few different ways, including things like reinterpretations and a creature made in Spore that I can no longer find.

My favorite is actually one from just last year, by DeviantArt user Urbinator17.

look! a fun book cover and a beautiful illustration on its own merits, by Paul Kidby who did most of the novels and official art in later years.

now. same thing in Germany: