For this edition of FanArt Friday, Pokémon Blog is honored to display the art of the talented Archeopteryx. This extraordinary artist has participated in the two generations of Pokédex Ilustrada, organized by our dear friends from Ilustradoras Unidas.
For Archeo, art is the way he captures what he loves, expresses himself, and loses himself in the process of creating an image by drawing lines with a pencil.
He was born with the desire to draw.
“I’ve been interested in animals —their shapes and characteristics— since I was a child. I enjoy studying them as a hobby, and that hobby ignited my desire to draw. I remember how mind-blowing it was for me when Jurassic Park came out,” he shared with the Pokémon Blog Team.
“Later on, I discovered metal music thanks to album covers that caught my attention and helped me find a type of music that I still enjoy to this day. At the end of my teenage years, I discovered the world of role-playing games, where you can create a character and play with your imagination (or with paper, pencil, dice, and many other things). Nowadays, I still take time to draw animals and fantasy or horror creatures. Even as an adult, I continue to carve out time to escape my thoughts and turn the things I love into art, as if it were my own world, isolated from my daily life.”
As mentioned above, our artist was a child fascinated by animals and dinosaurs, so his interest in Pokémon was a natural development.
“I was already somewhat into anime in the ’90s—like almost every child at the time—and then the Pokémon series came out with colorful creatures that had magical powers. To top it off, it even had its own taxonomic classification (the type chart). I played the video games as another RPG, but I’ve never really kept up with them. The TCG cards, though? That’s another story. Pokémon was my introduction to TCG. I played from the Base Set through Neo Destiny back in the day. I enjoy the Pokémon bestiary because it’s as rich and interesting as the ones in Final Fantasy or the D&D Monster Manual,” he explained.
Archeo’s profession has absolutely nothing to do with art, which comes with both advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantages are obvious: he loves drawing but has less time to do it. The advantage? He can draw when he wants, how he wants, and what he wants—keeping it as an escape and a pause from his daily life, which makes him enjoy the process even more.
“Speaking only about Pokémon, this franchise has such interesting design concepts that it makes you want to explore them in ways that Game Freak or Nintendo can’t officially allow themselves to do. For the same reason, I also enjoy seeing what other fans create, especially when they explore different aesthetics and media, like musical covers or fangames. The Pokémon world is so vast that it makes you want to be part of it, contributing your own style,” he said.
Our artist has several Pokémon dear to his heart, but his ultimate choice is Vaporeon.
“I have to clarify that I liked him before the meme, and I was drawn to him because of Dark Vaporeon from the Team Rocket Edition in the TCG (his rarity made me play the game). I believe it’s a more magical and aesthetic version of the first synapsids or a cetacean when they were still terrestrial. It also has a touch of what I like in the first mammals and protomammals. I also like Hydreigon (because he’s literally a hydra and a goth version of King Ghidorah from the Godzilla movies), Nidoking (because he’s the most charismatic Poison-type Pokémon), and Tyrantrum (because he’s a T-rex with royal-like feathers), but my favorite will always be Vaporeon,” Archeo concluded.
Remember, you can follow our great artist on his Social Media Account:
You can see more of his excellent contributions to Pokédex Ilustrada, below:
Pokémon Blog 