Keldio Custom Playmat

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Its funny how things work out, sometimes its not the complicated time eating monster projects that provide the solutions. 

No quite often inspiration comes to you when you least expect it and in I my case, and this instance, it was while I was colouring a Pikachu riding a Keldio.

'Oh' I said to myself, 'yes that would be how that works wouldn't it.' 

I'm not sure why It hadn't occurred to me before, If you read the Batman post I even describe how to do it but for some reason I hadn't twigged consciously how shading things properly actually worked.

Magic probably, 'Oh', indeed

Keldio is an odd shape, for a unicorn I mean. You would think drawing a small horse would be relatively straightforward but that bulbous nose throws the proportions into cartoon-land, theres something almost Simpsons'ish about the design, perhaps its just the colour. The mane is probably my favourite part, I like the shine and the way the various materials built up over the course of colouring the mat to crete the final look, just wind blown enough to help Picachu's ears give the impresion of movement.

The background is rather sparse by comparison which while probably not the way I would have gone does help make them stand out somewhat. I did add some depth by giving each colour designs based on that element, vines flames and water drops respectively and then finished off with a Pokeball motif but the choice of colours, and the layout of the whole design really are pretty much as described by the person who asked me to make it.

Its probably why my brain had time to wrap itself around other matters and come to interesting realiastions.

I still had to come up with a way to fit the characters on the mat and the various poses myself. The fact that the leg, tail, and horn form a triangle in opposition to the one created by the colours is a product of much digital editing and messing about before I moved onto the final piece. 

Computers are handy like that sometimes, you know when they aren't intentionally crashing just at the wrong moment.

So thats two Pokemon mats down and one to go. Tune In some time after Christmas when I once again  end up talking about electric rodents and, for the first time, for some reason about orreries...

That last one is less to do with the final design and more to do with a state of mind that started the process, before anyone starts worrying about Pokemon being shot into space.

Although now I say that...