RIP, everybody’s fucking gems. Kris/Suicune, Lyra/Celebi, and Ethan/Suicune are ALL Master Pairs
Well, I should have Kris and Ethan guaranteed, at least. But jeez, with three Masters this month, I wonder how many Master Pairs will we get for anniversary… 4? 5?
Bede’s a Pokefair Scout, and Hugh is an NPC. (Hopefully he’ll be out in the next couple months.) Mina, Valerie, and Winona get their Sync Grids added. Lyra, Hau, and Kris all get their EXs unlocked, which FINALLY. I already had her 20/20:
Edit, corrected Bede (initially, it was spotlight on the Reddit page about the datamine. He’s Pokefair.)
The other 10% of my heart is the part that loves Hau and is just absolutely bewildered that, in the one arc of the anime where the writers go out of their way to show that all the kids are one big friend group, that they don’t let one of the friendliest rivals that we’ve ever had in the games be a part of that friend group??
A little prologue to my piece for the Special Gala this year…Hau’s outfit has a bit of history behind it. ✨
Two years ago, I signed up to participate in Specord’s first-ever gala, and I was assigned to draw an outfit for Hau. The thing was, the gala that year was running concurrently with a Specord writing event, which I also wanted to participate in. I thought I could juggle both of them at the same time, but I only got as far as designing Hau’s outfit before I realized that I couldn’t handle that. So, I decided to drop out of the gala and focus on my piece for the writing event - a fic about Sun and Moon going to prom together in which Hau played a minor role.
Still, the fact that I had a perfectly good design for a formal outfit for Hau that went completely unused hung over my head for a long time - I always intended to go back and finish it someday, but I wound up never doing anything with it aside from refining the design a bit a few months ago.
So, fast forward to this year’s gala, which is announced to have a theme of signature Pokémon. I had a handful of characters in mind that I’d be happy to design an outfit for based on one of their signature Pokémon, but in the back of my mind I knew that being assigned Hau for this gala was the perfect - and possibly the only - opportunity for me to bring this design back, since it’s already heavily themed around one of Hau’s signature Pokémon. So when I saw that I was assigned Hau, I immediately - just like Moon does in the comic - looked at Hau’s old gala outfit and said to myself, “I can make him a pretty awesome outfit out of this”. Taking a look at this old design and the new one, I think it’s pretty obvious to see how I incorporated it.
(I actually considered at one point having Hau be completely shirtless in his outfit, since Primarina is based on sirens and mermaids which are typically depicted without shirts on. But I decided against it precisely because I wanted to keep the bubble-patterned shirt from the original gala design.)
I had the honor of participating in the Pokémon Special Discord’s annual gala event once again, and this time I got to design an outfit for one of my absolute favorite characters, Hau! The theme this year was “signature Pokémon”, so I chose to design an outfit based around his fully evolved starter, Primarina!
A full explanation of the design choices I made is under the cut!
His shirt is the color of Primarina’s hair, and the bubble design is a nod to Primarina’s signature move, Sparkling Aria. It could also be said to represent his bubbly personality. Meanwhile, his shirt collar is the same shape and color as Primarina’s collar. His hair is pulled back into a wavy ponytail that somewhat resembles Primarina’s hair, using the same kind of hair tie that Primarina uses. His pants are modeled after Primarina’s tail, and his bracelets are modeled after the tiara on Primarina’s head. The highlight of the ensemble is the scarf wrapped around his hair, which is shaped like the fin on Primarina’s head. It’s held in place by pink star-shaped hair clips that match the sea star on Primarina’s head, but they also tie into the design theme that all the artists from the Alola region incorporated into their designs: pink tropical accessories.
One of Primarina’s Pokédex entries reads, “For Primarina, every battle’s a stage. Its singing and the dancing of its balloons will mesmerize the audience.” This entry, along with the way Primarina transforms when using its signature move and Z-Move, inspired Hau’s transformation in the second image. By removing the hair clips, his hair and scarf come cascading down, with the scarf color matching Primarina’s hair to invoke the image of Primarina’s hair coming undone. Standing on his tiptoes makes his pants and socks look like a Primarina standing on its tail. And of course, Primarina releases a flurry of bubble balloons from backstage to complete the look!
Lastly, here are some concept sketches: picking and refining the design, testing out colors, and a demonstration of how the transformation works!
[These also include some sketches for a Charizard-inspired outfit for Leon that unfortunately I didn’t have time to bring to fruition.]
Guess who just finished UltraMoon & has various feelings about characters that weren’t nearly explored as much because it’s the Pokemon franchise? Yes. Hau, Lusamine, Gladion and all the Island Captains are so dope, man. The RR Episode? My brain exploded, I loved it. Ghetsis nearly destroyed my underleveled team and it felt so threatening, it was GREAT.
