#idlychat

I mean the long neck is the obvious thing, right? For me, the problem isn't the long-ification of Raikou itself, but more its head- it has the same problem as the Therian forms for me, in that it just looks like Raikou's head plastered onto another creature's body. The body is super stocky and square in a way that means that Raikou's round face looks super out of place. I feel losing Raikou's round 'sideburns' and changing the shape of its armoured head to more closely resemble that of a diplodocus, for example, would make the design look a lot less jarring

The red colouring is also a little strange to me- bright colours on pokemon designs can be a little hit or miss for me, as I feel it can make them feel less grounded if done wrong, and for me the red of Raging Bolt's design is just one colour too many. I changed it to black in my iteration to more closely match Raikou's colouring, and although I appreciate how the marking on Raging Bolt's design is meant to mirror Raikou's, I felt the design was getting a little clustered, and experimented with removing it

My last big change was to Raging Bolt's neck cloud. I really like how they brought Raikou's trail around Raging Bolt's neck as though it's head is poking through the cloud layer- it's a cute way to emphasise its height and connection to thunder clouds, and makes its body look like a lightning bolt. My main problem here is how the looks in the pokemon's splash art when it's static- it's strangely round and uniform. I feel like the intention is that it's meant to look like a swirling storm cloud, with Raging Bolt as the eye in the centre, but it being flat and seemingly attached to Raging Bolt, meaning it can't swirl around, diminishes the effect.