Hidden Details: Stupid Shit I Used To Do In Pokémon #3 (Patreon)

Hey everyone! I'm pretty busy this week. Just got back from a short holiday in Dublin to recharge (which was successful) and I kinda have to catch up on work I normally do every week. I'm also a bit reeling from the amount of extremely weird and exciting news of last week. Two new Pokémon games on the Switch, with generation 8 following in 2019, a new Fallout game, and a bunch of unused Pokémon? Sweet Christmas! Luckily for me, this week's Hidden Details is short and sweet! It'll again be a blog about the latest comic. In this comic, I chose to focus on consistency and character interaction instead of hidden references that I usually shoehorn in there.

#1: First off, I thought this was a cute way to give credits to the guy who came up with this comic. Reddit user /u/KaIEI (or Twitter user @Kingphazer) commented on the first Stupid Shit I Used To Do In Pokémon on Reddit and told me about this thing he used to do in Pokémon Red/Blue. That's right, I never actually did this myself. But I thought KaIEI's story was hilarious and kinda cute, so I immediately decided this was going to become episode 3, since I already had started drawing episode 2.

#2: As I said: consistency! This is the same "Charmadner" as the one from the first comic. So there's even a bit of a timeline going on in this series of comics:

1 - New Game;

2 - Player picks Charmander, names him Charmadner;

3 - Player battles Lance using Charmadner, now a level 58 Charizard;

4 - Player puts Charmadner in the PC, catches Mewtwo and succumbs to the outrageous theories surrounding Mew;

5 - Charmadner is now level 100, players starts a New Game;

6 - Player picks Bulbasaur but tries to rename him Charmander in an effort to trick his rival, gets his ass beaten.

I feel like I'm going to be sorry soon for using such a consistent timeline. I need to make sure the next one fits in the timeline as well! Or I'll have to keep using the New Game-excuse and that's a bit cheap.

#4: Instead of a common lightbulb cartoon characters summon when they get a brilliant idea, I chose to use a Pokémon: the fifth generation Pokémon that looks like a lantern/lightbulb, Lampent. There's no way a player of Pokémon Red/Blue knew about Lampent back in the day, so the consistency I'm so proud of gets kinda murdered here.

#5: Luckily, I was able to reuse the nickname screen from the first comic. That screen is no screenshot, but I recreated it myself from a YouTube let's play of Pokémon Red. I did have to create the little flower-icon for Bulbasaur though. Also, I'm pretty proud of the mini-story happening with the starters in these panels. In this panel, Red/the player picks up the Bulbasaur and tries to hold it out of sight of the Rival. Both Bulbasaur, Squirtle and Charmander are a bit flabbergasted about the weirdo.

#6: In the next panel, the player needs one hand to be theatrical and another to shove Squirtle in the face of his Rival, so Bulbasaur is - unfortunately - dropped. Poort thingy. Squirtle doesn't like to be shoved and Charmander just has to sit there and watch the weirdness unfold.

#7: And in the panel after that, the player makes up for dropping Bulbasaur by including him in his scheme: here, they're seen shushing together. I thought this part of the panel turned out pretty sweet. Squirtle is kinda pissed because he was shoved and Charmander is happy because he didn't expect to be picked.

And that's it! I'm taking a break from the Stupid Shit-series for a week, because I feel a certain grumpy old ape calling to me to include him in a comic again, but I'll certainly be back soon, since these comics are super well received. Nevertheless, I'll be back next week with another Hidden Details blog. See you then :)

Cheers,

Abel