Sprite Discovery Discussion

I was so happy about Mega Sawsbuck, but now that the melans are updated I feel... Strange about it. The melan doesn't feel like a melan anymore to me. I loved the black with an accented color of the old melan, and the new ones just feel so... bright. Initially I thought that the new melan deerling was the shiny version. And I know that an artist has worked very hard on the new melans, but they really don't give off melan vibes any more to me.

adding onto arsenal’s post, melan deerling looks like the albino sprite with a poorly done blue filter over it and some minor tweaks. with all due respect to the art staff, it feels somewhat hurried and not as good as it could’ve been.

Just saw the updated albino sprite... and unfortunately I cannot help but miss the old one. It doesn't appear very albino like anymore? I really missed the pale cream coat and the red eyes, like a real abino deer, but now it just looks like a normal Deerling with a blue-purple coat and normal eyes. :( I still appreciate the work, love the mega and all, but I miss the old abino and how it looked far more... albino.

One must remember that albinos and melans are based on the normal and shiny palettes of a Pokemon. Deerling, unfortunately, happens to be a line where the normal and shiny don't look too different so the albino and melan look similar. That's not to discredit your opinion - as it is 100% valid! I just wanted to offer an explanation as to why the colors are similar <3

I spent some time thinking about why the melan sawsbuck line feels so shiny-like to me, and I realized it is because I associate it with Shiny Houndour. I am probably comparing apples and oranges here, but I realized that the similarities to shiny houndour are probably what makes it feel like shinies for me. The darker shade of the Shiny Houndour (rgb(58,90,156)) is very close to the generic blue of melan Sawsbuck (rgb(64, 99, 163)) I understand that the melans are based on the albinos, but I really do wonder why it has been opted to pick this shade of blue for the melans, and not a darker one. I think that tuning down the brightness of the blue and making it darker will definitely help with the feel, but I am not an artist so my knowledge on this is admittedly very limited.

i fully understand where you’ve coming from with this, and i appreciate the explanation! however, i think that there may have been better color palettes that would’ve fit the albino -> melan formula while still looking like a melan rather than just a slight tweak to the albino. (i could try and provide an example, but i can’t sprite for the life of me so it wouldn’t really explain my point very well haha)

No worries, Quinn! I can alert the Art Staff and let them know of your guys' observations / opinions. I'm not part of Art Staff so I don't have the knowledge of the formula they use. Maybe one could comment if they get time

I feel like it could still be darken a bit to make it more "melan" I get that art team have to follow somekind of consistency, but here some white/whitish galar mon + more recent Exclusive as melan to serve as comparaison: Note: I don't dislike current Albino and Melan palette! I just wish the melan was darker in tone as for now they seems too pale. Note2: Tho on sawsbuck, I feel like the silver-like kinda blue doesn't really fits it for some reason. Probably just personal taste, it just feel... bland? For some reason?

Hello all! Mocha already answered some questions but hopefully this little bit of information will make things a bit more clear~ Some things that I will post in here might already have been explained, so I am sorry for that but it helps aid to the entirety of the story. For starters lets look at the regular and shiny sprites of sawsbuck, they are both in the similar range of orange, with the regular a desaturated orange/brown (which is the base for the albino) and the shiny a saturated orange (which is the base for the melan). This will inevitably be transferred over to the albino and melan giving them a very similar range of colors. Especially with the regular being desaturated resulting in a somewhat darker albino, while the saturated shiny gives the melan a lighter look. We did look into the line again and have made adjustments, it might still not be as dark as people want it to be but we have to keep in mind the legibility of the sprite when it comes to shading and details. The main body of sawsbuck consists of hues of orange. These different hues are very readable as they are but when they turn into a different color they get more muddy and seemingly disappear into each other. There is no real set darkness/lightness we go for when it comes to the pokemon as it completely depends on the sprite and how well it behaves with different colors. As for why the blue was picked over a different color.. the short answer? From the options we made this set was voted on the most. For the long answer we have to look at the set entirely, as we have explained in the past all colors on the sprite have the same amount of jumps to another color. So if the skin/fur color gets a specific jump (lets go with a hypothetical 5 jumps for this case, those being red, pink,purple, blue to light blue) all the other colors have to make the same number of jumps in the same rotation on the color wheel as well. We often make a batch of different colors and then vote on what we like best visually. With a set like sawsbuck were different forms come into play, we also need to keep in mind that we can have repeat colors. This might work for some pokemon but certainly not all. So this often limits our usable palettes. Hopefully everyones concerns have been answered with this, if not please do let me know and I will try my best to help! But to make a long story short, we have seen your concerns and have tweaked the albino and melan line~

I like never comment on these but... Oh my god... those albino baby deers!! Such! Perfectly! Cute! Colors! And the albino winter Sawsbuck has such amazing winter wonderland colors with the white and the grey-ish blue aaaaa !!!