[Showcase] Two designs for regional Carvanha - which one looks better?

[HufsaTheGreat96]

Hi guys!

A couple of months ago I completed my design for Jakarian Carvanha (shading and all) and I really loved the way it turned out. Especially the way it's glowing organs looked like a ribcage to convey its Ghost-typing ( and I only now realize how many Ghost-types I have made for Jakar...maybe I need to dial it down a little).

It is based off of deep sea hatchetfish with the idea that they are descended from Carvanha who followed their prey down into the dark depths and never found their way back to the surface, now cursed to adapt to a world without light.

But recently I made a new sketch that is meant to more closely resemble regular Carvanha as I realized that my first design might be stretching too far away from the original pokemon, especially in its pose but conveying its new bodyshape is tricky from the pose Carvanha's artwork was painted in, the second sketch also happening to resemble a submarine by pure coincidence.

Which one should I go with? Which one better conveys the idea of a regional variant, rather than an entirely new Pokemon?
The first is the original, the second is a sketch of the redesign.

 

[Sunfished]

I think both of them stray too far from carvanha's design unfortunately. One major aspect of regional forms is that they are still extremely similar and visible as the original pokemon.

Itd probably be much easier to design a regional form by heavily using the source pokemon as a ref, because most of them besides a select few change much of the main proportions unless thats a call to its concept. ie. alolan exeggutor being exceedingly tall.

In your case, I would make it much rounder, attempt to keep the fin placement the same, and keep the original eye structure

 

[AmberLB]

The second design is closer to Carvanha's than the first and I like it better. But like Sunfished said, the designs are really divergent for regional forms. Still look really cool though! These would make their own really cool deep sea fish fakemon.

 

[HufsaTheGreat96]

I think both of them stray too far from carvanha's design unfortunately. One major aspect of regional forms is that they are still extremely similar and visible as the original pokemon.

Itd probably be much easier to design a regional form by heavily using the source pokemon as a ref, because most of them besides a select few change much of the main proportions unless thats a call to its concept. ie. alolan exeggutor being exceedingly tall.

In your case, I would make it much rounder, attempt to keep the fin placement the same, and keep the original eye structure

Apologies for late reply, have been busy.

I want to stress that it is incredibly hard to combine that distinctive hatchetfish-like bodytype that I wanted to keep with Carvanha's round shape without having the angle in Carvanha's pose cover it up in the artwork. Carvanha's normal eyeshape also don't work given the environment that Jakarian Carvanha lives in and those round eyes are going to stay since they also work well in conveying the ghost-typing since they kind of look like the eyes of a dead fish.

And you are right that it does look really different from normal Carvanha and that was kind of the point, that they have changed so much from being stuck down in the abyss far away from their normal homes and had no choice but to adapt to the great depths and lack of light. Perhaps it would work better as a convergent form similar to Toedscool?

 

[Cosmega]

Dude, the second one goes hard. And yes, the design is far off from the original Carvanha, but the convergent form idea is also great! Amazing design nonetheless!

 

[CeoXeru]

I wonder if it's teeth should be bigger, like oversized, to compensate for the fact it has to hunt and eat things in the Abyss.

 

[vinsear]

I do think the second looks more like Carvanha's original design, but I also wonder if some color changes could help. The second I'm imagining with Carvanha's red, yellow, blue colors but darker, which might be why it looks more like it to me. If you do want to keep the first design, I think making the fins more similar in size/shape would be the easiest choice to make it more recognizable.

But also that would be an awesome separate Pokemon altogether!