Designing New Pokemon Starters! | Gnoggin - Kaskade Region

back in february i want to say i decided to hop on to fake mon creating being essentially a poke tuber who recently has specialized into pokemon lore and design origins i figured trying to create some sort of dream game concept would be a good step to take it may help me and even others get a better appreciation for the work that game freak does just about every pokemon these days have multiple layers of meaning to its name and design and sure some are more complex than others but comparing most pokemon to most other pokemon like games it's clear to see who puts more effort into their design inspirations choice in art direction is totally subjective so it's totally fine to hate on pokemon designs but at least the majority of pokemon these last few generations aren't just literally slap an element onto an animal and call it good we're creative get it it's a flamingo that's fire type because flamingo sounds like flamingo we're so good as you'll see in my backlog of videos i really nerd out when their concepts are just purely amazing or beetle has one of the best design philosophies or circular reasoning i don't know what to call it but but it's good okay anyway i wanted to make a dream concept so here's the beginning of a like six part video series where i'm just explaining all of my ideas not only for a new region filled with new pokemon but also several new regional variants and game mechanics plot direction and of course legendary war and of course what better place to start than with the starters let's go oh yeah i should probably also mention i am very bad at art like graphic design sure video editing sure photoshop heck yes but don't you dare ask me to draw anything because these are the results you'll get so i commissioned a load of fakemon artists to help me out with this series and credit where credit is due while fundamentally the ideas and researched connections are mine i worked with a lot of these designers own ideas on how to make them look even better too they really helped a lot in the case of these starters they are all the work of oscar belmont at our grey wind on twitter he's also done a lot of work for mr buddy who coincidentally is also doing a region based on the pacific northwest right now so the starters they need to fit the region they are in at least a little bit right i think so so to fully understand why they are the way they are you got to know the region welcome to the cascade region originally spelled with a k and then a c but i just kept messing it up and adding a second k so i decided screw it it has a second k now it's based on where i live the pacific northwest but rather than just literally the pacific northwest states i decided to get a little more creative with it see i like when pokemon regions are based on real places but they take a lot of liberties with that place the most recent region is the best example galar is based on great britain but if you flipped all of its features upside down and it was basically just england like england took over scotland and wales and moved all the cities around so what i did with the cascade region was take oregon and washington which are similar sized and basically overlaid them on top of each other and then mushed in some border elements so like southernmost british columbia western idaho and northern northern california but i'll get way more into the details in the region video here are your starters lompos thurple and burbworld now the pattern lovers among you will notice that they fit the theoretical idea that the starters of the same type have certain things in common like the fire starters coming from something similar to the chinese zodiac here's the snake the grass starter being extinct megafauna here's a north american ice age camel and the water starter being a weapon or warrior class this one's more apparent in its evolutions so let's start with lumpus it's super cute and i love it it's based on a camelops which are the common ancestor between camels llamas and alpacas both alpacas and north american camels have some extremely fluffy fur and camels are famous for their insane drought resistance able to store extra water in their humps so i wanted the plant that it's mixed with to have both of those properties which pointed me directly to pompous grass look at how fluffy it is while most common in the grasslands of south america pompous grass and its relatives have made their way all the way up to oregon as well and would you look at that camel grass a very close relative hmm [Music] camel camel grass would you look at that circular inspirations it was made to be and its name combines llama with pompous grass then we have thurple a little fire snake it's based on the western ground snake a native to this area and very very orange and then we slapped on a lava lamp and an exhaust pipe all of these lead well into the evolutions imo so when we get to those i can better explain more about therpel 2. oh and the name comes from thermal referring to heat and herp which references amphibians and reptiles like herpetology also it's face the poor thing is so nervous and scared all the time it's petrified if i don't move it won't see me incarnate and lastly burb whirl looking there a bug starter i've always wanted one of those it does mess with their effectiveness triangle quite a bit though but it's a worthy sacrifice they just won't start with a super effective move for that famous first fight you know like the classic pokemon games it's just scratch and tackle all over and over instead of fire blast and you just kill the other one in two turns it's lame burbworld's name comes from burble like a burbling brook you know a small stream that makes noise and whirl as in whirlpool and whirlygig which uh are these things i swear like every coastal city in oregon has a gift shop dedicated to them but also there's whirligig beetles these things it's a family of water beetle that go by all sorts of names i always used to call them boatmen because they look like little boats with two oars sticking out the side anyway being the first stage i wanted to sort of incorporate the larval stage of these beetles into the design but the problem is that they are disgusting looking and starter pokemon are supposed to be cute or cool or something so we sort of mixed the larva and adult stages together and gave it a sort of so ugly it's cute kind of vibe you know like like snubble or pugs for that matter like they are as ugly as feasibly reasonable but they're still kind of cute i guess oh and that's a bubble that it's blowing on its head like how babies have snot bubbles it mainly uses bubble moves and it can also blow that bubble big and wear it like a protective helmet which gets me to the abilities of all three so another big thing you'll need to know for the context of the designs of these starters is the new game mechanic i thought up now to keep it extremely simple for now as i'll have a whole explanation video about it later the whole region has extreme seasons and weather and has filled the pokemon here with a sort of weather energy battles are not only fought directly like normal but control of the weather is a big deal again and certain weather conditions can stack and there's a whole lot more of them that'll be its own video but since that's the whole thing i wanted the starters to all sort of reference this in their abilities and even in what they are based on burbworld here is able to blow itself an air bubble which protects it and its line from weather effects that impacts air quality in a way it's kind of like a rack when it's head except it's still an air bubble thermal is literally and figuratively hydrophobic it's scared of getting wet hence the pattern on its eye making it look worried but it really has nothing to fear because well it's it's a bit hydrophobic water slides off of its rubbery body rendering it immune to the effects of rain and snow and then lumpus well it's a camel and camel grass so it's drought resistant it's immune to weather effects that change temperature so all together they cover the spectrum of weather effects oh and one last thing a big part of starter design philosophy is that they each have their own personalities often a cute cool and funny one so therpel is a funny little scaredy cat snake lumpus is just cute as heck people love it though a lot of people are also allergic to its fluffy bits but that doesn't stop it from having a good time it's just happy in the sun always and then there's burbworld who gets cool later trust me i mean let's let's just evolve it right now this is spout law spout as in water spout and well outlaw a bad guy in the old wild west it's even got the hat and mustache it's still based on the same beetle but now it's the fully adult stage which actually carry around bubbles like this for breathing when they dive and some of them even have little mustaches i love this guy already but it gets even better so take a look at the whirligig beetle again see how its ore arms are posed like that remind you of anything anything related to the wild west yeah it's the cowboy duel pose the post that duelers take when they're about ready to draw their weapons real fast and shoot each other and that's exactly what these water-filled bubbles on its hips are for it will stand motionless staring down its opponent and then rapidly pinch at its water bubbles and form a water whip attack oh so there's the weapon theming okay so intelion took guns so we did a whip instead cowboys used whips too anyway spoutlaw are little ruffians they plot heists with other pokemon to steal large quantities of food at once and it strokes its mustache and tilts down its head all cool-like but on the inside it still feels a little bit guilty which explains why it's not dark type as well as its evolution but before that let's evolve therpel this is ask fault i gotta say i'm way proud of this name and asp is a type of snake a fault is a giant crack in the ground which these guys make all the time while rapidly tunneling oh yeah it's fire ground type now and together it sounds like asphalt the material that roads are made out of both because roads are well on the ground it's a type of ground and because of the term road snakes which is a colleague term for those lines you see on a road that's been patched up they fill in cracks with sealant to prevent them from getting bigger and to keep water out because the sealant is hydrophobic oh just like the pokemon full circles again this is so much fun also all this connection to the road would explain the exhaust pipes too neat asphalt are no longer afraid of the rain but they do still spend a lot of time deep underground absorbing geothermal heat but when out of the ground you can see some of their insides moving around like a lava lamp which made them super popular a few generations ago and with their exhaust pipe tails they can propel themselves even faster through the ground now moving on over lampus evolves into dan fluff whose name comes from fluffy dandruff dander and the name dan because simple names like that are funny but also because apparently the name dan means god is my judge or positivity both of which work i guess so dan fluff here spreads animal dander basically the thing that people are allergic to animals are actually allergic to most of the time it spreads it all over the place in the form of dandruff that also acts like pollen it's a person with allergies worst nightmare essentially but like it doesn't try to bother nobody man it just wants to chill relax in the sun and the grass let nature take its course live life in the breeze it doesn't judge it sees everything and everyone in equal light it loves to see balance in all things sort of referring to a stereotypical idea of what a lot of the people in this area are like you know oh and look it's got a little hump now how cute and the tooth nose and hair are reminiscent of a cartoony caveman because the main inspiration is the north american camel which went extinct in the ice age now are you ready to evolve one more time i'm excited i shared most of everything we've talked about so far on twitter a while ago but i saved these for this video alfalfa laps here he is though incredibly dimwitted alfalfalops have learned to gain control of their pollen now it was a lot of work but it was worth it all it wants to do is see suffering and you know we get enough of that already leave as little of a mark on the world as you can just relax have some grass the name pulls from camelops again that old llama camel alpaca which in a way makes it an alpha proto an early build a precursor to all of those things hence the alpha in the name and then alfalfa is a type of grass that is commonly fed to animals such as domestic llamas and alpacas the fluff on its neck and chest are sort of reminiscent of it its signature move fluff buff raises its defenses and evasiveness and fills the air with pollen one of the new weather effects that i'll explain in the weather video it's overall on the slower and lower attack side because you know it's just chilling but it's also quite the tank having high hp and defenses now i mentioned that pompous grass is primarily found in south america so he made the hump on this guy is shaped like the american pyramids and the long leaves and ears on the back of its head are shaped like some mayan and aztec headpieces but what are all these south american references doing in the pacific northwest well as i'll explain in a later video the lore world building and all that for the region revolves around a lot of migration and what we gain and lose due to it but don't worry it's not preachy trash but a lot of new pokemon immigrated to the region next up asphalt evolves into tarmandoa it's now a western ground snake mixed with a rubber boa which then literally adds an extra layer of rubber on top of it the name reflects this as it ends with boa and the rest of the name comes from tar mend which is what road snakes do and tarmac another type of road covering like asphalt which tends to be more resistant to scuffs and certain weather effects tarmandoa is incredibly fast both above and below the ground thanks to its propulsion system and because of its heat it forms lava tubes while digging there are lava tubes all over this part of the world they're neat i've been in some it's signature move thermal vortex has it spin its body towards the foe creating a spinning and scorching blast of air that hits multiple enemies and clears any weather conditions that are wet or cold if there are none it begins a drought overall tarmandoa is about its speed primarily its other stats are more or less equivalent but with its evolution its ability has been tweaked rather than simply being immune to rain and snow it now also halves the damage it takes from water type attacks meaning technically water type attacks are still super effective on it but it's times two instead of times four i mean that rubber on its back makes it waterproof from that angle and lastly my personal favorite of the bunch spout law evolves into vacuum ale i had a hard time choosing between that name and vague mail which do you like better aquamail voguemail mail comes from maelstrom which is basically a giant oceanic whirlpool because again whirlygig beetle whirlpool and also aqua is aquatic and agua is spanish for water and vaquiero is spanish for cowboy so when people think the wild west they don't usually think of the pacific northwest but like what do you think the pacific northwest was doing during that time period yeah there were still cowboy stuff happening they just had trees in the background and seeing as this area was super close to mexico before the mexican-american war and seeing that the hispanic population here is sizable and still growing i wanted to reference both in some way so here's a whirly gig vaquiro a lone wanderer maybe even a sheriff it always felt guilty poland heists but since it once lived as an outlaw it now knows how they think making them even better fighters for justice their water whip attacks are near unseen and they can even use that same water whip to form a lasso whirlpool to entrap their enemies which brings us to the signature move world duel it whips up a whirlpool a maelstrom and launches it at the enemy which deals damage traps them in a whirlpool for three to five turns and starts a rainstorm i freaking love this man the hat the pose the cowl ooh vaquemail is a bit of a glass cannon referencing those wild west duels it can deal a lot of damage with its high attack and special attack and high speed but its hp and defenses aren't great and in case you didn't notice the three of them are all immune to their weaknesses weather effect alfalfalops fills the air with pollen but vacuum male is immune to air quality changes aqua male causes rain but tarmandoa is just immune to rain and tarmandoa causes droughts but alfalfalops is immune to temperature-related weather so that's cool technically overall though the type triangle is still not perfect the bug on vacuum male makes fire balance out on it and gives it an advantage over alfalfa laps but it's not like the official triangles are all perfect you know also as a set the evolutions all have some theming in and of themselves for example vocal male spout law and burbworld the good the bad and the ugly the classic western movie turned saying or trope we have the hero an outlaw and an ugly baby purple asphalt and tarmandoa it's it's stop drop and roll you know the fire safety thing smokey bear is an american icon therpol gets scared and freezes in its track asphalt drops deep underground and tarmandoa is a constrictor whose signature move has it roll around forming a vortex of heat and then ah honestly the weakest of the three lumpus dan fluff and alfalfa laps are the three types of triangles because pyramids triangles yeah alfalfalops is obtuse because it's dumb the other definition of obtuse dan fluff is pretty chill and sees everything and everyone equally it's an equilateral triangle and lumpus is a cute because it's cute it's really dumb but that's what we came up with so i'd like to know what you think given the choice which of these three would you pick as your starter or would you just take one because you have to and then box it once you can because no pokemon since the generation you played when you were 12 has been good let me know down in the comments these took a lot of work not just on the artists parts but also in coming up with everything it takes a surprising amount of research trying to fit all these pieces together well enough so big props to game freak in the pokemon company who have to consider all of this and even more like global cultural acceptance marketability and how they would utilize their budget when animating them in the anime and what they sound like etc they have a big job and i've definitely got more respect for it now but we ain't anywhere near done i've got a region full of ideas several new pokemon new regional variants legendary lore and so much more so many awesome ideas to explain i have a link to a playlist here when that happens and i hope to see you in the next one as i continue to share my ideas for this cascade region in pokemon blazing bloom and frigid fall [Music]

Channel: Lockstin & Gnoggin

Views: 1,341,757

Keywords: pokemon, pokemon anime, pokemon sword and shield, my pokemon region, lets make pokemon, pokemon design, starter pokemon, designing pokemon, fakemon, fakemon region, kaskade region, blazing bloom, frigid fall, fakemon design, fakemon starters, creating pokemon, lets make a pokemon, lets make a pokemon game, pokemon game, making starters, starters, pokemon starters, best fakemon, pacific northwest region, pacific northwest pokemon

Id: YvZu06dHK-A

Length: 18min 36sec (1116 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/TheRealWamuu]

Ah,a fan Gnoggin fan i see