Behind the art: unfinished eeveelution designs

Back in middle school, a couple of friends and I decided that create a group where we would create a drawing group. The group did two things: creating collaborative drawings and creating small prompts we would all draw. It was a strange form of an indirect collaborative drawing. And we were having a lot of fun! We drew from our prompts a lot. But then we also started letting our characters interact in our drawings.

Then our prompts became more like:

“what would happen if we tried to cook” or “hey what if we made our characters all go to a sleepover together”.

Other times we were more like “what if we all drew each other’s characters”.

Here is our characters at a sleepover

I honestly don’t remember how most of the conversations went but at one point we decided that we would all draw 3 of the Eeveelutions (from Pokemon) basically it’s the evolved form of Eevee. We decided to create human designs for each character. (We didn’t realize how ambitious this prompt was, I finished 2 but my friends weren’t even able to finish one.)

First up was: Espeon.

I really wanted her to give off more of a witch-like feeling as she was a “psychic” type. I gave her a hood and these long flowing clothes. Not sure how well it comes through now but it was a design choice at the time. I didn’t want her hair to be covered up because I just really didn’t like drawing hoods and I would rather be able to see her face.

I made the red gem on Espeon’s head into a tiara—I didn’t want it to just float. I could’ve also made it a third eye but I didn’t like that concept. Espeon also has 2 tails in the original design so I kept that but just made it more like a ribbon that wrapped around her clothes. I used a mask because I didn’t want to draw the rest of her face. I perceive Espeon as a mysterious character who generally hides. I cracked the mask because I wanted to be able to see at least one of the eyes and the tiara. The hair was based on the tail because I thought that:

Two tails = Pigtails

Other than that, I kept with the original color scheme, and nothing too drastic was changed.

I had a bit more struggle when creating the design for Glaceon since I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. The only thing I went off of was the fact she was an Ice-type Pokemon. I made her dark-skinned so there is more contrast in the character, especially with the ice sleeves.

For her, I really wanted the coat to be fluffy but in like a snow-like way which is why the top of the coat resembles more like a patch of cotton as opposed to fur. I also made her have a long dress that seems to be made out of loose material. I wanted to show off the ice-like effect on her hands slowly creeping up her arm but also since Glaceon is the ice-type evolution, she would not be scared of the cold and could wear short sleeves.

The belt around her waist was mainly due to the fact that I wanted all the Eeveelutions to match somehow, and since Espeon had a tiara I thought it would be fun to incorporate a gem belt onto Glaceons design as well. It also helped make her dress a bit more unique and fun. I also gave her a face veil because just like Espeon, I did not want her expression to be perceived (and the veil adds a little bit of mystery).

Maybe I will do a whole redesign of all of the Eeveelutions later, who knows!