Miltank used Milk Drink!

Miltank recovered health!

This is an illustration put together for Game-Art-HQ's Pokémon Generation 2 art collaboration.  Following the success behind last year's 20th Anniversary project covering the original 151, the goal for the follow-up is for the artists to illustrate moves performed by the 100 Pokémon initially found in the Johto region!  Many of the artists that have participated in the previous project have started advance work on this, and come this coming Sunday it will be open for newcomers.  If you're interested, go check out the group and give it a shot!

It's inevitable that I'd come back after having so much fun with last year's selection.  Signature moves have been the most fun for me to pull off and I would end up going back and forth between a few in the run-up to the announcement, before I decided to make a move on Miltank and her Milk Drink healing move.  Just like Chansey in the previous generation, Miltank has got a quirky healing power that reflects her species - as well as having a hidden brutal side thanks to her placement in Whitney's gym and her crushing Rollout move that would cause many a rookie to stop and approach the fight in a different way!

Upon researching the move, I saw a lot of fan artists approach Milk Drink in a variety of ways, whether it be as simple as drinking a bottle of Moomoo Milk or turning it into a meme with gross-out humor.  In the end I've decided to see if I could cute-ify it a bit with this interpretation, thanks to an entire crate full of Moomoo Milk stored in cartons.  The inspiration from the pose actually came from the map screens in Alex Kidd in Miracle World on the Sega Master System, which showed the titular character eating a hamburger or rice ball with the happiest expression you could get out of an 8-bit system.  The effect work is loosely based on how recovery in Pokémon Black & White was visualized, with rising green balls and glowing blue stars occurring after consumption.

Oh... and milk mustache.  I could not pass the opportunity!

All in all she turned out to be really fun to draw - she did remind me that I'd have to get used to a wide variety of shapes when handling different types of Pokémon again, and that's the beauty of the project as you can even learn things you didn't think you were capable of before.  Nevertheless, newbies, be hyped for April 2nd when you'll be able to give it a go!

Pokémon is a franchise owned by the nice guys at Nintendo.  I drew this!