#excavalier

We take a small break from your daily Oc and character posts to present…. Wait, another Pokémon???

Yes! It’s Excavalier! As someone who grew up on Gen 4, I was admittedly quite stubborn on wanting to like Gen 5 when it came out. But I still remember being blown away by the Unova Pokémon designs as a kid, especially the bug types! But I remember exclusively drawing Excavalier and Accelgor in my notebooks in school, even gifting a drawing of them to my teacher lol. I still remember being upset not being able to have both Pokémon in my game cause I didn’t have another DS or both titles to trade/evolve them! Haha. It was a little hard ‘breaking’ the personality of Excavalier due to the many moving parts in its design, but at the end I focused more on the rendering to test the waters of painting metal again.

Btw, I’m super happy a lot of people really loved Natu and Xatu’s drawings! It tickles me that an obscure Pokémon suddenly gained interest! I couldn’t be happier my drawings somehow moved people this way, even if I drew them for the silly fun of it lol. Thanks for enjoying my work! Drawing these really obscure Pokémon I liked, even as a kid, almost feels like I’m visiting an old friend again. I don’t know why they stuck with me a a kid, but perhaps it’s true that every Pokémon can be someone’s favourite!

This one will actually be a pretty simple one, just because there is actually not a lot of information available about this species’ behavior. This, unfortunately, forces me to weigh more heavily on the danger that they may post to humans, which earns excavaliers an unfortunate “C” ranking. That isn’t to say that there isn’t a silver lining, though, which we will get into.

While they are larger than you may expect, measuring in at just over three feet tall and weighing over seventy pounds, their apparent ability to levitate means that mobility won’t be too much of an issue for an excavalier. As for getting them where you need them to go, however, you may run into some problems, as they aren’t exactly the easiest pokémon to carry around. For this and other reasons we will get into, I must emphasize that one should only adopt an exacavalier if they are absolutely certain that they will be able to invest in the training they need to ensure that they get along with you and can understand what you need from them.

Excavaliers aren’t said to be particularly aggressive towards humans, and indeed they are popular both historically and contemporarily in places like the Galar Region, where one is depicted in a famous painting, for example (Sword, Shield). This doesn’t mean that they aren’t dangerous, of course! These pokémon are capable of moving at pretty high speeds (Black, Shield), they use their lanced to jab and batter enemies with dangerous moves like X-Scissor, Iron Head, and Giga Impact. Given their size, speed, and fearlessness, an attacking excavaliers is something you should be very careful about. These moves may lower this pokémons’ overall score in my algorithm, but there is actually a silver lining: excavaliers have evolved for defense, not offense.

Excavaliers are heavily armored pokémon, each having evolved from a karrablast upon stealing a steel-like shell covering from a shelmet (White, White2/Black2, X, Y, OmegaRuby/AlphaSapphire, Sword). They have been observed using their lances to fight primarily if they believe they need to protect themselves (Black2/White2, X, OmegaRuby, Sword). This means that if you are gentle and calm around an excavalier, the chances of them outright attacking you, while not zero, are very low. This is another indicator that, with the right training, an excavalier may make a fairly safe companion.

The lunch rush has passed, replaced with a spectacle of two trainers trading fists for the sake of their pokemons' honor. Ayumi frowns as she watches a trainer take a fist to the face.

"I'm gonna lose this bet," Ayumi groans. Rio raises a half smile away from Ayumi's gaze, a tiny bit of triumph cracks through her lips.

But she drops her smile as quickly as it came, instead pausing to look at Ayumi's face as it contorted with "oohs" and "aah's" after each physical exchange. It was close to the end of the shift, and Ray might be on his way back. Now might be the best time to ask.

Game recognize game.

First: Golaria (Golurk + Altaria)

Taking a break from drawing things for other people to make more knight character concept art.