This is what I've been working on for the past few days!

Last Virtual Fossil Friday we had an excellent presentation by L.J. Krumenacker (who I have spoken to at multiple Fall Fossil Fests at the Idaho Museum of Natural History) about the ever-lovable Oryctodromeus (Idaho's state dinosaur and a precious little dooper of an ornithopod). One of the most remarkable things about oryctos is that they were definitive burrowers, so host MaggieJo mentioned how cute it would be if they were basically saurian prairie dogs. And so I just had to draw that.

The colored pencil work is kinda rough; I haven't really worked with colored pencil in a while. But I picked up some tips from a couple of excellent colored pencil books, so I feel like I at least know what I'm doing slightly more than before.

Also featuring a guest appearance by Idaho's giant oviraptorosaur, which so far is only known from its eggs. Exciting stuff coming out of the Wayan Formation these days!

 One thing that amuses me about fictional settings with more advanced technology than the era in which the fiction was created is how they almost always get the direction of technological progress completely wrong. Mid-20th-century sci-fi confidently predicted that we'd be living on the Moon with our jetpacks and robot butlers by now--but they never expected the Internet or 3D printing or cringe-y generative AI. (Although, the first Pokémon games came out right on the cusp of widespread cell phone development, so in Gen II the PokéGear is a rather prescient smartphone analogue.)

Also I just realized that Red's hat design changes in these earliest comics. Not sure why. I guess I was still easing into the aesthetic of the series and hadn't quite settled on a design for Red that would be something I wouldn't mind drawing literally hundreds of times.

You might also notice that in this series, one side of Red's jacket collar is perpetually turned up. That's an inside joke; for some reason that tends to happen to me when I wear collared tops. No idea why.

Yeah, I really find myself questioning a lot of things Oak says in this game.

 

 The more I overthink old Pokémon core series intros, the weirder they seem. Like, your character is Oak's next-door neighbor in a miniscule town with an apparent population of 9, and he has no idea who you are?

Also, these first few comics are just the beginning of Oak's very strange character development. As the comic progresses, by the beginning of Book 2 he's somehow become this supernatural entity who is known (and feared) by the Pokémon world.

I love when stuff takes on a life of its own like that.

The early intro screens in the Pokémon core series are actually pretty terrifying. You're in this featureless void, and suddenly someone comes out of nowhere and starts indoctrinating you into a world of monster fights, and I've probably thought way too much about this.

Also I thought Oak's face in the third panel turned out pretty great.

 Oak's gotta give the same speech every time. It's a contractual thing.

 And so an adventure begins...

Now that I think of it, I have a niece who's 10, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about the idea of her going off on a region-spanning adventure, catching and training ferocious creatures with supernatural abilities, and confronting a criminal organization, all with no adult supervision.

... When you're actually 10, though, that whole thing sounds awesome.