Smeargle's Studio Arterviews [Sunfished- post #87]

Kiwi

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This week we're featuring another Laptop artist - Clementine ! (Clem's icon was made by Syrinix)

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Hi Clem, nice to meet you! For those who don't know you, how would you introduce yourself?

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Hey! First and foremost, thanks for having me. I'm Clem, or Pujo, a 23 years old French artist, rands player and Pokemon lover. I've been playing Pokemon for close to 20 years at this point, and I've been active on PS & Smogon since late 2018. I'm a French Room Owner & Global mod on PS, and I mod a few things on Smogon, mainly some RoA subforums & Smeargle's Laptop :]

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Yooo Pokemon since 3 or 4 years old!! So you grew up on the franchise :) what game did you get first? And glad to have you of course!

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I first got Fire Red for Christmas of 2004 with my older brother, and fun fact, I started learning how to read with my older sister just so I could play Pokemon without needing my brother to read everything I still play through FRLG more or less once a year? I probably know a bit too much about the game at this point, and I don't think there's a single mon I haven't used to beat the game after all these years

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Awesome story, and really cute at that. Clearly with learning to read with your sister, it being a game you played by yourself at such a young age, and being a Christmas present on top of that, it was definitely really important to you. And playing it once a year testifies to that lol. So now that we know how you got into Pokemon, how'd you get into art?

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I used to spend hours in middle school drawing in class, I wasn't very good at it but a bunch of friends & I drew some stuff and made a story out of it, and I was rly inspired by everything I was into at the time, so mainly Pokemon, Inazuma Eleven and mangas such as One Piece or Fairy Tail. I unfortunately lost my very first notebook, so I don't have my very first attempts at drawing anymore, but I still have some old stuff at my parents'. I'll gladly go through my drawings from when I was 13 to see if there's anything worth sharing haha! I got into art on Smogon around early 2020, and I spent my time during COVID lockdown trying to do Custom Avatars, cause I really wanted one. I kept doing it for some time, and then some people told me what I was making was good, and asked if I could do something for them, and a few years later, here we are, I make custom avatars on a daily basis for people to use on PS!. I even got to work on Teamtour Avatars, which was definitely a goal of mine when I first started.

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Aye seems like you had a lot of fun drawing when you were younger. Hoping to see what you made if you can find some of it :o. I can relate to you in the covid aspect, staying at home meant too much free time, but for the better artisticly. And it's great to hear you improved to a level that allowed you to achieve your goal and create things that could be used on the sim c: Do you have any future goals or current goals which you're planning on or working on now?

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Well it's been months since I've actually updated my art thread and I've been meaning to do it for quite a while so I guess that's a current goal of mine... Jokes aside I really want to work more on making characters from scratch so I can stop turning down commissions from people wanting an anime character as their custom avatar, and more importantly, make my own customs without having to rely on other artists :]

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Good luck! I'm sure with all the time you've spent working with other sprites, you've certainly gotten a knack for what the Pokemon sprite style looks like. It's just a matter of time and practice now. And then you can make some $$$ with that hehe Aside from art, do you have any other hobbies? Including randbats ofc

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I'm very much into music, mainly french hip hop and 2013 tumblr girl stuff and I've studied the piano for 17 years, although it's been quite a while since I've actually played it. I really really like cooking & turning my kitchen into a mess anytime I'm hungry, and of course if you know anything about me, you know I'm a huge beer fan, so please send me recommendations, especially if you're from Europe.

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I can only recommend water and orange juice because I'm 16 but enjoy. I'm sure someone has some good beer recommendations But I can probably resonate with piano and food a bit better :^). What's your favourite song to play on piano and your favourite thing to cook?

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It's probably a very easy answer for anyone who knows how to play Joe Hisaishi stuff but Innocent from Castle in the Sky is always a no-brainer whenever someone asks me to play something. Everyone knows this song, and everyone's always impressed by how loud I can play LOL As for my favourite thing to cook, I'm always down for some 1am risotto, it's super easy to do, very good, always impresses whoever I'm cooking for, and it's some great comfort food: pretty much everything I'm looking for when I'm cooking :]

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OOO Castle in the Sky is amazing! And unfortunately I've never had risotto but it does look really really good. The skill to cook is also a great (and necessary) one that a lot of people don't have so good on ya. Other than hobbies, do you work or study anything?

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Yeah but I feel old saying I'm not a student anymore :frowning: I have a biomedical engineering masters degree, and I currently work as a consultant in some big French consulting company. I'm mostly doing HR stuff though, I'm waiting for an opportunity to work in the healthcare department but 2023 was a big mess for my worklife. Still love my job tho, I have lots of free time and the client I work for is lovely.

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Ayyye biomedical engineering is a great degree. I hope you can eventually get into the healthcare department and hopefully contribute your best efforts to it to improve the overall quality of life for your area, France and maybe even the world - who knows? What was your favourite part of the course/what made you want to study it?

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I appreciate that :] I've actually always wanted to be a medical doctor, especially back in high school, but the French school system kinda sucks and being a medical doctor means giving up 2 (3) years of your life with no guarantee of succeeding, and since I was quite young and lacked maturity, I decided to go for an engineering degree instead, which always offered the possibility of working in the medical field afterwards. Favourite part of the course was definitely the end-of-track project I had to work on, it was a big paper on age-related macular degeneration (basically, how you can turn blind with age because of spots in your vision). I learned so, so much through research and experimentation, and my art skills were actually quite useful for this, as I made a gif showing the evolution of the disease after some medical image processing. I'm not sure I'm explaining this very well, but basically, we had to identify spots on eye scans through a given time period, highlight those "blind spots", and do some image processing so the only thing that appears is the blind spot. After doing all this processing, I put everything together to show how the spots grow through time.
I was able to find the gif in my old puter, so here's what it looks like if anyone's curious.

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Really really interesting. I'm assuming it starts off with smaller blind spots that then build up into larger blind spots as time progresses, as the retina deteriorates. Quite sad, which is more the reason why we need to analyse these things and hopefully find preventative measures for them. It's quite sad that the school system sorta blocked you from being a medical doctor, school systems need to improve in general. At least you're on the way to doing something great! Here's something I totally forgot to ask: What are your favourite movies and games atm? Or media as a whole, including books and so on

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You're absolutely correct, the main point of the project was to pinpoint exactly when the bigger spots appeared, and how fast the growth actually was. That's a very interesting question! I don't watch lots of movies, but one of my favourites is definitely Baby Driver by Edgar Wright, I love how well music is incorporated into the movie and how important it is. As for games!!! I've recently beat Persona 5 Royale and oh my god was it good. This is probably the best game I've ever played if we're talking objectively. There hasn't been a single day since I've beat it without thinking I should just replay it immediately. Other games I like include: • Celeste: Celeste is my favorite game of all time, soundtrack is absolutely incredible, gameplay is addictive, characters are lovable and also trans rights • Xenoblade Chronicles 3: great storyline, great soundtrack, environments are breathtaking, characters are interesting and lovable, and combat is really fun as well, game might be a bit long to beat but it is worth it. Also for anyone who's played it, does your therapist know about Chapter 5? • the Inazuma Eleven series as a whole: gameplay is great, games are fun and characters are goofy and likable and very "shonen-like" but in a very good way.

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Unfortunately I haven't played any of those except Celeste BUT I know a lot of people here in Smeargle's have played Persona and I'm sure they'll be excited to ask questions about it! Also know a couple of people who've played too much Xenoblade and I might just drag them to answer your question lol. Might check up Inazuma Eleven because I'm a massive Shonen Jumphead so I'll probably like it! As the interview comes to an end, is there anything you want to add or ask?

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Not much that hasn't been said before, I'm really glad to see the direction Smogon has taken for spriters and custom avatar artists, with the fresh new QC team & the new custom submission process. I'm very happy about the interview as well, if anyone wants some music or nice indie games recommendations feel free to ask! It's been a pleasure Kiwi, thanks a lot for these great questions :]

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No problem! Glad to have you and excited for the questions!

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~ Please feel free to ask Clementine any questions by replying in this thread! ~
 

Kiwi

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This week we're featuring a fish fan - Sunfished !

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Heyhey Sun! Since you're mostly seen in the CAP scene, how would you introduce yourself to those who don't know you?

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Hello! I mostly hang out in CAP, as someone who started art and design with making fakemon. Outside of that, I love designing characters, especially those that are on the simpler, human-y side!

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Really love your fakemons and the human characters you draw! Especially from our recent art trade :heart:. Let's begin by talking about your interest in designing fakemons. Can you tell me more about how you got into that? I'm also very interested in how you found the CAP project and started contributing to it

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My journey with fakemon started all the way back when I was obsessed with Neopets, which is an online game where you raise a virtual pet. From there, it evolved to me designing my own "pets", which took a lot of inspiration from Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and particularly Pokemon at the time. Eventually I had stumbled upon the world of Pokemon romhacks when it had just started taking off those many years ago, and played through a romhack called "Pokemon Quartz". I was enamored by the idea that someone out there had added their own fakemon into a game! After a lot of research on the topic, I had developed a sense of designing fakemon for a multitude of things, such as making my own fakedex and even branched out into fakemon contests and the like.
My journey into CAP actually had a funny start. Around highschool a friend of mine discovered Pokemon Showdown and we played a lot of battles there, and in one particular instance we ran across "Mollux" in the random battle tier. Thinking that we could add our own fakemon, we started spamming designs in the CAP room and got into a lot of trouble. Eventually one of the higher ups taught us what we needed to do to get our own designs in, and thus began my involvement with CAP, particularly engaging with the design aspects.

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Very interesting. I love how your interest in neopets stemmed into an interest in yugioh, Digimon, and obviously/most importantly, mons! And thanks to Mollux, you made it into CAP :). Could you tell me a bit about some of the mons you've made? And the ones that won in final subs :o

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The mons I've designed for CAP were initially very poorly made! Since I was still new to art and design in general, my designs had a very amateurish look to them. I think it's relatable to say that I jumped straight into it without thinking much about the actual design process. You can see a lot of this in my first two CAPs, 18 and 19, where it was a mishmash of ideas that didn't work together at all, let alone having a coherent theme to work with. It was a real eye opener seeing everyone's amazing designs and processes, and this was actually when I started to "study" pokemon and fakemon designs! CAPs 20 and 21 were examples of where I started applying more thought into designing fakemon, taking the time to lay out design elements and doing a bit more research into what concepts I was getting my hands on. These didn't go as far as I'd have hoped in the polls, but these were where I got most of my confidence in my skills developed.
CAP 22 was finally where I won! And it was surprisingly one of the most simple designs I've ever made: Kerfluffle. Admittedly I don't think I spent too much thought in this one, which I guess shows that sometimes the concept just sticks out over the actual render. Most of the CAP users from that time probably remember how awful the render was haha. Either way, it was probably the coolest moment to me since I finally got to see my design on pokemon showdown :D My time after winning was spent on honing my skills as a designer, and while I haven't won one since, (I've won a couple of pre-evo designs though!), it has helped me grow a lot as a fakemon designer!

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Amazing! I've recently been getting invested in CAP as well, so I should definitely draw inspiration from you. It's great to know that concept can outdo the render and capture the hearts of those in the CAP process. And without a doubt, you're incredibly skilled at rendering now!
On another note, what other things are you interested in drawing?

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Whenever I'm not drawing fakemon, I love to doodle down character designs! While on the simplistic side, I'm fond of drawing oc's and the like, especially those that have a bit of an angelic feel to them. While drawing fakemon tends to railroad me into nailing down the "pokemon" look, I find it fun to experiment with different rendering styles with drawing oc's.

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Amazing! And I know because of our art trade lol. I think your ocs are really neat. Mind telling us a bit about how you got into oc art?

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I actually have no idea how I got into it! I think the earliest time I remember was when some folks over on Pokemon Showdown's Art Room always shared their oc's, and I was fascinated with how much story was behind those images. Ever since then I dabbled a lot in trying it myself, developing characters with their own backstories and the like.

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Ic, perhaps it was just an innate interest from your youth :o Could you tell us a little about the backstory of an oc you like? And share some images if you want too!

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Here's one of my favorites, her name is Eumia! She's sort of a character I like to doodle at times, and encompasses a lot of design elements I like, especially large floating things haha. She's an angel that creates chaos on earth in order to see if humanity can evolve to overcome those obstacles. Despite being an angel, she actually hates her job because she's lazy. A great set up for making some funny scenarios. She's also my avatar on Pokemon Showdown!
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Love Eumia. She's got some really cool shapes. Really shows your skill with shape language. I remember seeing your avatar and getting super impressed! Definitely one of the best on the sim... and I've drawn her hehe On another note, what kinds of games are you interested in?

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I'm a simple man and love to play all sorts of games, although I'm not particularly good at any specific genre. Growing up I was really fond of rhythm games, specifically Taiko and by extension Osu! Nowadays I just play whatever my family is currently interested, like Fortnite or Genshin haha.

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Sun the simple (family) man. I was pretty aware of your interests but it's fun to know that it's something you share with family :) how about movies, wadoya like?

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I have a lot of favorite movies, my favorite genre being sci-fi and psychological thrillers. Christopher Nolan movies never seem to disappoint, with Interstellar being one of my favorite movies of all time. I also really enjoy the current rendition of the Planet of the Apes movies, with the trilogy being something I like to rewatch every couple of years. Outside of western film, I'm currently catching up on a lot of animated films that I've passed up, especially anime ones. Promare, The Boy and The Beast, and Children Who Chase Lost Voices are some of the few recent watches I've made that have become instant classics. They're very inspiring as film, because of how creative the narratives are which is what I look forward to most with movies.

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Ooooo psychological thrillers are great. Gives you the feels, which is probably what stories and films are meant to do! Hopefully someone reading has watched some of these films as well :o
To finish off, is there anything else you want to add or ask?

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Nothing in particular! Thank you for interviewing me, it's been an honor :D

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Glad to have you!! Questions time!

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~ Please feel free to ask Sunfished any questions by replying in this thread! ~
OH and a special side note - It's Sun's bday!
 

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