Fakemon

I've said many times before that I enjoy fan creativity. From music to movies to art to... well, EVERYTHING people can do related to video game series. And seeing as it's Poké-Month (as if I need to remind everyone of this AGAIN), I gotta admire the creativity of fans when it comes to Pokémon. Drawing Pokémon, drawing humanized versions of Pokémon, drawing anthropomorphic versions of Pokémon... However, what I also enjoy in fan creativity about Pokémon is to see what people come up with... to create new species!

Hell yeah, today's Fun Stuff article is about the Fake Pokémon, also known as Fakemon! This is a very interesting idea in the Pokémon fan community, as it is a concept anyone can go with: Simply create a Pokémon species that doesn't exist, or a new evolution to a Pokémon family that already exists. There, I type "Fakemon" in the DeviantArt search bar, and I get 144,152 results. Of course, not all of them will be great, but it's still nice to se what people can come up with.

To create good Fakemon, I'd say there's a few pointers to think of during creation:
-Would it bring something new in the game? (That includes the Fakemon's design, as well as any additional information given by the artist: Typing, Pokédex description, ability, special attacks...)
-Like all Pokémon out there, each Fakemon must have a minimum of one form (if it does not evolve at all) and a maximum of three (if it evolves twice), unless it uses different methods of evolution to obtain the alternate forms (as an example, Poliwhirl that could evolve into Poliwrath or Politoed).
-Also, if there is anything really new brought up (such as a means of evolution that hadn't been used before, a new typing that didn't exist previously, a new ability or game mechanic), it must still be possible into the Pokémon world.
-Last but not least, if the artist managed to mimic the art style of Ken Sugimori, that's a BIG plus.

The most impressive, I think, is not that people manage to create some of those Fakemon; it's that some artists are so devoted to the Fakemon community that they create whole freaking Pokédexes of Fakemon. Don't believe me? Look at this. That's no less than 239 sprites of Fakemon, many of which are fully-original Pokémon while others are inspired by famous Pokémon (such as the many new forms of Regi golems at the bottom of the grid) or are evolutions and pre-evolutions of existing Pokémon (such as Chatot and Torkoal, just to name those). Here's another one, which is a work in progress (and has been for well over a year or two already), but with many innovative ideas. My only negative remark about this one would be that it contains a bit too many Pokémon inspired by everyday objects, but whatever.

All I'm saying is that fan creativity sometimes works just as well as do the official designs. I swear, go on DeviantArt, look for Fakemon or Fake Pokémon, you should have a lot of fun looking at the results that come up.