Ever since Pokemon Black came out last month, I’ve been obsessing over the wonderful world of pocket monsters. You know, like I do with every single thing I like. You didn’t think I started a website because I was only mildly interested in stuff, did you?
Anyway, it’s gotten to the point where I’ve even started thinking about making up a few Pokemon of my own, which I imagine is a pretty common thing for fans of the franchise. I mean, I might not actually have the talent to draw any of the things I come up with, but I’m at least as good as the people working on the game at looking around and identifying common objects that could potentially have faces in order to create stuff like an evil lamp or an exceptionally chatty ice cream cone. Don’t get me wrong, I like those things, but they’re not exactly difficult to think up.
So when I ran into some road construction while I was driving home the other day, inspiration struck, and I came up with a couple that I thought would fit right in with the official ones. I told Sheli Hay, artist of the brand new webcomic Troop Infinity, and she surprised me by actually drawing them up and sending them to me in today’s mail. Strangely, and this is not a joke, she had drawn them in crayon on the interior of a bizarrely folksy sympathy card that advised me to “keep on keepin’ on” in the wake of tragedy.
For the record, Sheli thinks I’m the weird one.
Anyway, feast your trainer eyes on Trafficone!
Trafficone, the Construction Pokemon, would be a bug/ground type who hangs out at construction sites like Unova’s Route 4, disguising itself so it can feast on unattended planks and scrap metal.
But what’s this? Trafficone is evolving!
Congratulations! Trafficone has evolved into Conestruct!
The basic ideas were mine — and I even made sure the names fit in the game’s ten-character limit — but Sheli really knocked it out of the park with the little details like Conestruct’s reflector-eyes and the spikes on his shell. I’m thoroughly pleased with ’em.
They have inspired me… to keep on keepin’ on. Thanks, Sheli!