Pokémon Past and Present, a tribute series in Unreal Engine 4

Hello,

My name is AGE and for the past few months I've been working on a Pokémon tribute series in Unreal Engine 4 called Past and Present. Today I released the first short film/episode and I am super excited to share it with you!

Past and Present is a story from the point of view of uncaptured Pokémon that takes place in a completely recreated 3D version of the Kanto region, a region introduced in the first generation of the Pokémon games. The story begins with the adventures of Flaym and Kab, a young charmander with a kabuto as his mentor!

I hope you enjoy the end result!

I really enjoy the characterizations for these two! I'm not as experienced in animation, but I like some of these movements for the characters a lot! The way the charmander just tilts it's head smiling when it wants to try our ember on the kabuto, as well as when the kabuto hides under it's shell from the sparking of the pokeball. It very cute! I think the fire effects on the tail is a little distracting, but I have no idea how those kind of rendering effects work.

Overall, I really like it! I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before in this style and just such a cute and odd duo to start with. That ending is a really good subtle cliffhanger.

Anastasia.R said:

Hey Age, this looks pretty sweet!

I'm liking the look and feel from the episode - I especially like the timing and sounds! I think the transition at 0:57 is one of my favorites, just because we get a nice sense of the time of day and we see some Pidgeys! I guess my only question or critique is about the Kabuto and Charmander meeting: just because I don't think they're established enough for us to understand why Kabuto carries the Charmander in the beginning. I really appreciate the 3d approach, though - and I look forward to seeing more from you, Age!​

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Thank you, I'm glad you like it so far! I totally understand your question/criticism. What I can say is that episode 1 is not the chronological start of the story. Kab (kabuto) and Flaym (charmander) have already met and are on their way. Their relationship and background can, for now, be found in the Character Library on my Patreon (I can't post a link to it as this is a new account, but you can find it in the description of the video). It is also very likely that this will be explained in a future episode :)

Nina said:

I really enjoy the characterizations for these two! I'm not as experienced in animation, but I like some of these movements for the characters a lot! The way the charmander just tilts it's head smiling when it wants to try our ember on the kabuto, as well as when the kabuto hides under it's shell from the sparking of the pokeball. It very cute! I think the fire effects on the tail is a little distracting, but I have no idea how those kind of rendering effects work.

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Thank you for your kind words(!) and for letting me know that you find the fire effects a bit distracting. I will keep that in mind when creating future episodes. This can probably partly be solved by using different lighting and camera techniques to get the viewer to focus attention on the parts I'd like to.

Nina said:

Overall, I really like it! I don't think I've ever seen anything like this before in this style and just such a cute and odd duo to start with. That ending is a really good subtle cliffhanger.

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I hope it got you excited for the next episode!