Pokémon Design - Alolan Golduck

I won't deny it, I'm still a pretty big Pokémon fan, and with the new game offering up some different takes on old designs I wanted to take my favourite Pokémon and give it a new twist.

First, I tried to figure out what kind of change this would be. For instance the original design looks like this:

Originally just a water type Pokémon I wanted to reflect the Psychic nature that's always been present in it's design. I sketched a couple ideas, from floating monk types, to ones that seem exhausted by their mental strain.

I actually decided to work on it's previous forms story. Originally a dumb duck that suffered constaint migraines that gave it its psychic power, I wanted to try and portray this even more in its evolved form.

And so the Alolan Golduck suffers from constant insomnia. Never able to sleep from it's terrible headaches, it only worsens the effects, which in turn increase its power.

Part of it's design is taking away the forehead gem from the original Pokémon and making them a charm necklace, and actually making use of Psyduck (It's original forms) colour palette also:

And here is the final design.

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Sam Santala - Concept Artist | Illustrator

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