High quality scans of original Pokémon watercolour art shared for first time

eurogamer.net:

For years, scans of Sugimori Ken's original watercolour artwork of the first two generations of Pokémon species have circulated online. For the first time, high quality scans of the artwork are being shared with the Pokémon community in the hopes of archiving them.

The drawings depict the first 251 Pokémon to appear in the games and were uploaded by YouTuber and Pokémon archivist LewTwo to Twitter. The scans were sent to Lewtwo by Twitter user ExcaliburZero_Z.

The old scans are believed to have originated from the Pokémon Red and Blue Player's Guide, Lewtwo explained, where they ended up with «inaccurate colors, were often misshapen, and generally very low quality».

Taking a look at the new scans which have been shared so far, the difference in quality is clear when comparing them to the old scans. The colours look less washed out and the outlines are much clearer. Look at Tauros and it's incredible how much was previously lost in the colours. Rather than various shades of orange, Tauros has browns! And greys! And looks a lot more like the Tauros we're used to seeing.

Since this is a fairly large undertaking, the process will be as follows: We're going to be removing all low-quality Red, Blue, Gold & Silver Pokemon artwork from the Asset Archive, effective immediately. Each Pokemon will then be meticulously cut out for transparency in… pic.twitter.com/dBB3xJEboX

Lewtwo has shared scans for plenty of other Pokémon including Ivysaur, Diglett, and Oddish. Lewtwo stated they will be working with sites such as Bulbapedia to share the new scans, as well as putting them on their own Pokémon Asset Archive for preservation. The original scans will remain available online too for those who wish to look at them.

Heya, Psyduck