In a set of the three starters, Charizard was the first to be completed. The image was the one that was least time consuming, as both Blastoise and the as of yet incomplete Venusaur are far more detailed than this image. I really enjoyed making this, I usually kinda have trouble with fire but with this I think I really nailed the sort of flow of the curves and such and the sort of flow between less and more intensely heated areas of the flame. The shadowing was pretty time consuming, really like the brown hue that came out of it though.

In retrospective I always assumed Charizard was a scale-less smooth sorta reptile but as with the case of Detective Pikachu that seems VERY much seems to not be the case. One thing that's kinda funny to me is how in this image Charizard's propped up hand was actually more based around the movie version of mew two's hands as opposed to charizards actual hands. It was kinda hard to find any good palm shots that weren't like really just low detailed and sorta flat looking. Along with this I was kinda on a kick listening to the movie's sound track at the time I think. I really like how it came out though, always loved that sorta ball-ish look Mewtwo's hands had and Charizard kinda looked like it would kinda have that going on with its palm I think. The feet weren't to hard, really basic shape really in fact. Did take a while to find the exact spot for the back foot though.

The wing was really tricky, it took a long while to actually get that sorta bend in the middle right actually. Something about how its essentially like a piece of bent in fabric made it kinda tricky to actually curve with the rest of the wing, though why that is I cant quire remember. I remember really liking how the bending depression interacted with the light from the fire though, that was actually one of my favorite parts to work on because it was just really interesting to shade that sorta smooth inward curving texture then take the curve into consideration when shading the inner half of the wing and how the shadowing would be affected. I also kinda enjoyed working on the limbs of the wings too, with how they get less muscular and more bony as they go farther down. Perspectives off about the lower half of Charizards left, aka your right, wing though or maybe its just me. Also not sure why but really like how the weird bone horn elbow things on the wings turned out

I remember the head actually being the biggest pain, something about the mid muzzle shape was a pain to construct and even into the coloring phase I remember stopping just to fix it. I think even now its the weakest part of the image, has this sort "flattened out" feeling that I'm just not feeling, ya feel me? I think I had a tad trouble with exactly where the horn on the Charizard's right, aka your left, side too. Something about the exact way it pointed and and placed was a bit odd because it has horns that sorta spread out, meaning they're not parallel. Kinda have to figure how how far apart they go or else it just looks off, like they're TOO close are far if its not just right. Even now I don't like the horns that much, they feel too dangly and scrawny but when I bulk them up they also look weird so unno. The lump on the muzzle and the nose also look really weird and it bugs me how thin the part of the muzzle between those spots looks too.

The fire was the sorta main course for this image. In this set I wanted each Pokemon to have a sort of level the camera was looking at them from. From below for Venusaur, above for Blastoise, and the middle for Charizard. Because of this making the fire sorta spewing out seemed like a good way to give the image a sense of motion without it just sorta being boring with a sort of straight on view. Originally I was planning on making the fire MUUUCH shorter so more of the body would be seen but it just kept growing. The fire was also going to just have three color layer. Red was going to be the dark color, orange for the base, and yellow for the highlight. Problem is mainly orange fire on an orange dragon... you know. I started pronouncing the red and yellow far more because of this. Problem then was that the fire was too flat. Added more colors, the fire kept growing in size to give the image more flow, and there we go. A sweeping blaze of five entirely different shades. The funny thing is drawing fire shading is kinda like drawing water in a weird way. You gotta disperse the color into these weird sharp chunk and avoid colors blobbing together, give a sorta central mass to various areas that varies in color from spot to spot with the hotter spots being lighter, and add these weird highlights and chopped up sorta depths to give a sort of depth to the fire because you cant really "shade" fire, but fire tends to be less intense/compact in thinner areas so make those colder usually. with it spreading and thinning more often the farther from the source you get.

Hopefully you like this and thanks for viewing my image and possibly reading my long just rambling about what i think about this image.