Well, this was inevitable.

So yeah, the new Pokemon got leaked. I've been planning a full dragon/scalie team for a while, so I was basically relying on Sobble to deliver. And... it's... not... what I expected? Or what anyone expected, for that matter. There was quite a bit of backlash at first, but people got used to it and now it seems on par with Grookey for people wanting to pick it (and sometimes coming out on top), with Scorbunny bringing up the rear. I never hated Inteleon's design, I just thought it was weird. And I still do, but not quite as much. It's got weird proportions, and the posture in the leaked image didn't do it any favours.

But honestly, just how weird and different all the designs were this time was one of the most exciting things about them! Scorbunny and Grookey ended up being very... safe, I guess? Scorbunny ended up as a tomboy, which Pokemon doesn't have many of. But yeah, the designs just aren't that interesting. Sobble gets brownie points for looking so goofy and unexpected, and I started to like it once I thought about the tie-ins to the spy theme, because I really wasn't seeing them at first. (And looking at it as a basilisk lizard rather than a chameleon helped.) And of course once I started drawing this, more 'Mons who will be perfect for my scalie team started cropping up. I like Inteleon as male or female, but Toxtricity is pure husbando material. (Shame about his incredibly stupid name which literally just describes his type.) But who's my favourite? That would have to be Dreepy, the Galar pseudo, who is a precious baby and I love him. After the line got revealed I added him into the falling piece of paper.

I did the sketch, lineart and flats all in Krita on my laptop. I'm definitely getting used to Krita, and drawing on a screen feels a lot more natural than drawing on a tablet while looking at one's monitor. But Krita just can't do the fancy stuff that Photoshop can. And when it can, it ends up being incompatible with PSD format, so I had to do the shading and everything in Photoshop like usual. It was a quick drawing, and the shading came together quickly too - the fancy new brush collection I got from a lecturer at university seems very promising. I like how this turned out, as a quickie to capitalise on the latest buzz. :P

Hehe, this kind of serves as a spiritual successor to when I did the exact same thing with Salazzle three years ago: (link)

Except this time I actually tried. Salazzle is still my favourite. Better colours, and especially better proportions. No, not just the hips. Reeeeally surprised she got into the Galar dex, by the way. Since, you know, the UK has a grand total of 6 native reptile species. But Game Freak were generous enough to give me about 27 'Mons to work with for team building. And the less said about the total dex size, the better...